ACORN gives up Ohio business license, won't return

[The Northerner]

COLUMBUS, Ohio – The community organizing group ACORN has agreed to give up its Ohio business license and not return under another name, as it has in other states, under a settlement struck with a libertarian center that sued it.

U.S. District Judge Herman Weber, in Cincinnati, signed off on the deal, which settles claims brought by the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law against ACORN's voter registration practices. Other terms of the deal are confidential.

The center alleged in a lawsuit filed in 2008 that ACORN's voter registration drives amounted to organized crime because the group turned in a pattern of fraudulent forms.

Center attorney Maurice Thompson said restricting ACORN's ability to support or enable other groups to "do what they do" was crucial to the deal, especially in a state he characterized as "ground zero" to their voter advocacy efforts.

"It carries a great deal of significance because, in the absence of that term, ACORN could simply have shut down but reopened the next day as WALNUT or CHESTNUT or whatever and done the exact same thing," Thompson said. "So our goal was to affect permanent change."

In other states, including New York and California, ACORN chapters have disbanded and resumed operations under new names.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100311/ap_on_re_us/us_acorn_ohio