Founder of law firm that sought out Hobby Lobby clerked for Alito in Reagan administration

[suffragette]

First there's the indication that the Becket Fund was seeking out and contacting businesses to push this (and similar) lawsuits:

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/jul/01/sally-kohn/did-hobby-lobby-once-provide-birth-control-coverag/

The Greens re-examined the company’s health insurance policy back in 2012, shortly before filing the lawsuit. A Wall Street Journal story says they looked into their plan after being approached by an attorney from the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty about possible legal action over the federal government’s contraceptives requirement.


Then the fact that Hasson, the founder of Becket Fund, clerked for Alito:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/founder-of-hobby-lobbys-law-firm-pioneered-the-debate-over-religious-freedom/2014/06/30/f128d4d2-e04b-11e3-9743-bb9b59cde7b9_story.html

But others say Hasson, who worked in the Reagan Justice Department for then-Assistant Attorney General (and now Supreme Court Justice) Samuel A. Alito Jr., and Becket are deeply part of the problem, over-hyping the threat to diverse religious practice and feeding partisan divide.



Hasson has retired, but continues to advise his hand-picked Wall Street successor:
http://hosted.verticalresponse.com/795925/b5e9648bab/1470793229/09d6a92fcc/

May 12, 2011
Becket Fund President and Founder Steps Down and Announces Successor

Tonight at the sixteenth annual Canterbury Medal Dinner, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty’s founder, Kevin J. “Seamus” Hasson, announced that he is stepping down from the position of President and Chairman of the Board. Hasson will retain the honorific title of President Emeritus and will remain on the board of directors and will continue to assist and advise the Fund with regard to its litigation initiatives. William P. Mumma, President and CEO of Mitsubishi UFJ Securities USA, will serve as the next president of the Becket Fund, and Professor Mary Ann Glendon of Harvard University Law School will assume the role of chair of the board.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/10/becket-fund-lawsuit-obama-birth-control-mandate_n_1335467.html


A somewhat unlikely replacement took over: William P. Mumma, a Wall Street banker who runs the New York trading desk for Mitsubishi UFJ Securities USA.

~~~snip~~~

Hasson wanted Mumma to replace him, precisely because he had the potential take Becket in this new direction, Mumma said.
"Bill is a Wall Street guy. Bill is a true believer. He wanted to raise the profile and reorganize. So we are a nonprofit that runs like a well-oiled business now," said Becket's executive director, Kristina Arriaga, who has worked for the organization since 1995. "We have gone from guerilla warriors to special forces," she said.
Arriaga said Becket has gotten more aggressive in the face of what it views as a hostility to religious freedom under the Obama administration. The fight with Obama over whether to force religious institutions to offer contraception, including the morning after pill, in health insurance plans has put this tension under a very bright spotlight.


And Mumma is a big contributor to Republican candidates:
http://www.campaignmoney.com/political/contributions/william-mumma.asp?cycle=12


Reagan ties, Alito ties, Republican ties.

For anyone thinking this is narrow or somehow limited to Hobby Lobby, you might want to think about what is really behind this.

[Scuba]

1. Just another step towards revoking women's suffrage.

[blkmusclmachine]

3. And Scalia pretty much already says so.

[suffragette]

17. Exactly. It's about control.

[UTUSN]

2. R#9 & K for, we lowly can't even guess who's behind the curtain n/t

[suffragette]

18. Yep, all we can do is dig to find out as much as we can

And in this case, the more I'm digging, the clearer it is becoming.
Much thanks for the K&R

[suffragette]

23. That's what I'm thinking, too.

And the lead attorney clerked for Scalia.

[factsarenotfair]

5. I'm starting to think that SCOTUS upheld the ACA to use it as a way to establish corpo-theocracy.

And that brings up some questions I don't want to think about on the Fourth of July.

[Mc Mike]

6. Excellent research. Thanks for putting this all together.

Conflict of Interest combined with massive conspiracy. That's the repug gameplan.

[bdona91078]

7. Hobby Lobby The Iranian Connection

It is not a question of whether one should use contraceptives or not

It is not a question as to what Hobby Lobby chooses to do

The question is whether the religious beliefs of those making the law should
negate the legal rights of those with different beliefs who must follow
their decisions.

The five supreme court justices who came down against contraceptive care in
their decision are all Catholic.
The Catholic faith is against contraceptives.

The five justices would have sinned against their faith if they allowed
contraceptive care.

In the Catholic church this is a mortal sin which could cause the 5 justices
to lose their salvation and possibly be excommunicated.

IF THEY COULD NOT VIOLATE THEIR FAITH WAS IT FAIR FOR THEM TO
MAKE A DECISION THAT IMPACTED PEOPLE OF DIFFERENT FAITHS OR
NO FAITH.

WOULD THESE JUSTICES EVER BE ABLE TO VOTE ON A SUBJECT IF THAT
VOTE WAS CONSIDERED A SIN AGAINST THEIR CHURCH AND FAITH?


THIS IS FROM CATHOLIC ANSWERS
In 1968, Pope Paul VI issued his landmark encyclical letter Humanae Vitae (Latin, "Human Life&quot , which reemphasized the Church’s constant teaching that it is always intrinsically wrong to use contraception to prevent new human beings from coming into existence.

The Church has always maintained the historic Christian teaching that deliberate acts of contraception are always gravely sinful, which means that it is mortally sinful if done with full knowledge and deliberate consent (CCC 1857). This teaching cannot be changed and has been taught by the Church infallibly.

Thus to avoid sinning against their faith they deprived those of other
or no faith of that part of their health care.

In Iran, decisions are made in the same way.
The religious beliefs of those making the decisions guide their actions
and what the people must follow.

So this is where we are.
The United States joins Iran in making laws based on the religious
beliefs of the judges.

Bill Donahue [e-mail]

[JHB]

16. Not just Catholic, but in or near the Opus Dei subcult

Scalia, Thomas, and Alitio (at least) are either members of or closely-allied with Opus Dei.

I think the distinction is important, particularly the wild over-representation of a single extremist subgroup is masked by the broader umbrella of "Catholic". The majority of Catholics in this country seem to be quite willing to ignore church doctrine when it comes to contraception.

[Beartracks]

8. Never make the mistake of assuming religious conservatives are stupid people.

They are not.

==============================

[Liberalynn]

15. I don't underestimate the puppeteers behind the curtains

[Shoonra]

9. Mere fact of clerking is not suspicious

Plenty of Supreme Court cases are entrusted to former S.Ct clerks, so it's not so suspicious here. After all Supreme Court clerks were picked from the very tippy top graduates of the best law schools, are familiar with Supreme Court pleading procedures, know how to do the very exacting research needed to make a good argument, etc.

And the fact that they might be known to one or more of the sitting Justices doesn't hurt. In every court some lawyers are familiar faces to some judges; it doesn't evidence favoritism, it merely indicates experience and (hopefully) expertise.

Lots and lots of (well financed) parties make a point of looking for and hiring former clerks when they need to prep a Supreme Court appeal. Just as lots and lots of criminal defendants look for former assistant prosecutors for their representation. Just as surgical patients would want a surgeon who already has experience seeing the same sort of surgery done by an expert, etc.

[bluedigger]

12. That would all make sense, if HL sought out the Becket Fund to represent them.

But we have reasonable cause to believe it was the other way around, I think.

[ReRe]

10. K&R

OK. So let me try to get this straight. The judge (Alito) who should have recused himself because of this conflict of interest, is the same judge who wrote the decision for the majority?

What we have here is a travesty.

[suffragette]

22. Also, the lead attorney clerked for Scalia

http://news.muckety.com/2014/03/26/paul-clement-lawyer-for-the-right/46331

A former clerk to Antonin Scalia and solicitor general under President George W. Bush, Clement is accustomed to appearances before the justices. He has argued more than 70 cases before the court - more in the last 14 years than any other attorney.

(Much more of interest at link)

He works at a different law firm than Becket.

I don't know about recusal. I think having been a clerk wouldn't be cause for that, though I'm not a lawyer and wouldn't know.

But it is striking and worth examining that so many former clerks for these justices are at the lead of pursuing and litigating these cases. These clerks were trained by these justices so would be aware of their views and have learned from them. And now they are seeking out these cases to put before the justices who trained and guided them in the past. I think it's very likely they knew which way they would tend to vote. It's possible they even knew the justices wanted an opportunity to make such a decision.

[SunSeeker]

11. The evil runs deep. nt

[radhika]

13. Sidenote: Las Vegas cop-killer Amanda Miller was a Hobby Lobby employee...

An almost laughable co-incidence - if it wasn't so predictable.

I don't suggest that Becket Fund or Hobby Lobby's owners had any connection to her or her co-shooter hubby Jerad Miller. Still, Hobby Lobby seems to be a fetid swamp that attracts the bottom-feeders of America.

It seems to be a strange attractor for the most extreme and marginal types.

[drm604]

14. K&R

[Doctor_J]

19. Another impeachable conflict of interest by a right winger on SCOTUS

[Uncle Joe]

20. Kicked and recommended, nice catch.

Thanks for the thread, suffragette.

[suffragette]

24. Thanks Joe. Another senior counsel, Hannah Smith, at Becket clerked for Alito and Thomas

As far as I can tell, she wasn't directly a lawyer in this case, but as senior counsel likely gave advice and she went on media to push their points about it. Also, it looks like they've been lining up these cases.

Makes me wonder about what training and guidance they received from the justices now deciding the cases.

Here is some info on her views and on Becket starting a clinic at Stanford to train the next generation of lawyers in pushing this agenda:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/22/us/at-stanford-clinical-training-for-the-defense-of-religious-liberty.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
PALO ALTO, Calif. — Backed by two conservative groups, Stanford Law School has opened the nation’s only clinic devoted to religious liberty, an indication both of where the church-state debate has moved and of the growth in hands-on legal education.

Begun with $1.6 million from the John Templeton Foundation, funneled through the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, the school’s new Religious Liberty Clinic partly reflects a feeling that clinical education, historically dominated by the left’s concerns about poverty and housing, needs to expand.

~~~

Barry Lynn, the executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said he was “shocked that a major law school would accept a gift from Becket,” which he described as “a group that wants to give religious institutions or individuals a kind of preferential treatment, even if that hurts a third party.”

But Hannah C. Smith of Becket, who took part in a panel discussion here on Monday to observe the clinic’s opening, said what liberals like Mr. Lynn call the strict wall of separation is found nowhere in the Constitution. Her group, she said, is working to show that “there are certain God-given rights that existed before the state. God gave people the yearning to discover him. Religious freedom means we have to protect the right to search for religious truth free from government intrusion.”

[Phentex]

21. kick

Hobby Lobby

[dixiegrrrrl]

25. Excellent find! Happy to kick and rec.

Posts like yours are what makes DU such a valuable site.

Good work, thanks for the information.

[suffragette]

28. Thanks! Still digging and found Joshua Hawley clerked for Roberts

http://stlouis.cbslocal.com/2014/06/30/supreme-court-to-decide-on-hobby-lobby-case/

Josh Hawley, an associate professor at the University of Missouri School of Law, was on a team of about 15 lawyers working on Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Inc.



http://www.becketfund.org/author/joshhawley/
Joshua is a former clerk to Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. of the U.S. Supreme Court

I think I may need to update the original post with the additional ckerking connections.

[JustAnotherGen]

26. Thank you - best post

In a long time . . .

[1StrongBlackMan]

27. I wonder if the NSA has meta-data showing coordination ...

Oh, wait ...!