Spring 2004 #2 UPDATE

Published by the Southern Legal Resource Center

P.O. Box 1235, Black Mountain NC 28711 · 828.669.5189

Visit our website at www.slrc-csa.org

SLRC Counterattacks DuPont Attorneys

BLACK MOUNTAIN, NC -- The Southern Legal Resource Center has filed a motion for sanctions against the attorneys who represented DuPont Corporation in the recent “DuPont 7” case.

As SLRC friends and supporters are aware, on March 8 U.S. District Court Judge Henry Hudson ordered the “DuPont 7”and atty. Lyons personally to pay a total of $37,000 in attorneys’ fees to DuPont’s counsel after deciding that the DuPont employees had no legal grounds to sue DuPont for its anti-Confederate Southern American practices.   The SLRC, a nonprofit corporation,  was not even named in the Court’s order, but that did not stop the DuPont attorneys.  They have filed a Notice of Foreign Judgment against both Lyons and the SLRC in a Buncombe County, North Carolina, court.  In this latest development, however, the SLRC has countered by calling that action frivolous and demanding sanctions against the Du Pont attorneys for trying to include the SLRC in their collection tactics.

 “We will be seeking attorney fees for all the time we had to spend defending this frivolous attempt to collect against the SLRC,” observed Carl Barrington, SLRC Director and attorney of record for the SLRC in the sanctions motion.

A Notice of Appeal, challenging the Court’s award of sanctions and Attorney’s fees has been filed with the Clerk of the 4^th Circuit United States Court of Appeal which sits in Richmond, VA.

            BLACK MOUNTAIN, NC -- H. K. Edgerton, Chairman of the SLRC’s Board of Advisors, has announced that he will undertake a march beginning Monday May 17 to DuPont’s Spruance Plant in Richmond, Va., to call public attention to DuPont’s tyrannical treatment of its Confederate Southern American employees.

            “From the standpoint of Southern heritage, DuPont is the Alamo,” Edgerton said recently, “only this time we’ve got a chance to help the defenders.  I will be marching to gather financial and public opinion support for those boys all along the way.” 

            Edgerton’s route to Richmond begins in Littleton NC to Henrico, NC then to Brunswick, VA Edgerton, VA then following the Jefferson Davis Highway all the way to the DuPont Plant and ending on the Capitol steps in Richmond.  SLRC case manager Alison Schaum said she will be contacting SCV camps and League of the South chapters along the proposed line of march,  appealing for accommodations and assistance for Edgerton and his staff.  Further developments will be posted on the SLRC website as they occur, and will be posted in the next edition of the Update.

Virginia AG considers fraud indictment
of Lincoln statue merchandisers

            RICHMOND, VA -- SCV Virginia Division Commander Brag Bowling reports that the Virginia Attorney General is considering pursuing charges of fraud against the U.S. Historical Society, a so-called nonprofit corporation which made and sold high-priced miniatures of the Lincoln statue which was unveiled last April at Tredegar Ironworks Historic Site in Richmond.

            The miniatures were marketed at a price of $895, supposedly to help offset production and installation costs.  Inquiries prompted by an anonymous website disclosed the existence of a second corporation with a slightly different name, whose officers included the sculptor himself and which was operating at a handsome profit.  The corporate officers called the existence of the dual names merely a paperwork glitch.  The National Park Service, which oversees Tredegar, denounced the investigation attempts and vigorously defended the Society, as did the Virginia Historical Society and the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

            SLRC friends in Virginia are urged to contact your state Attorney General with messages of support in proceeding with this courageous prosecution.

 We are currently working with our clients on determining a date for depositions, scheduled for May 27th.  Stay tuned to the SLRC website for the deposition date, which will be posted as soon as it is finalized.  This case, if decided favorably, could have the same impact on schools that seek to ban Confederate symbols as the landmark Castorina v. Madison County Schools.  Please pledge your support to the SLRC today, so that work on this vital case can continue uninterrupted!

A required mediation in the case of plaintiff Richard Smith’s action against his employer, the Bechtel Savannah River Plant in Aiken, SC, is scheduled for May 14.  Watch for updates.

Because interest in this case is great and developments are ongoing, the SLRC has installed a separate page for it at our website.  Please Click Here

In a 29 page opinion U. S. District Court Judge, Harvey E. Schlesinger in Jacksonville, FL has dismissed our lawsuit filed on behalf of SCV members James O’Neal Parden and Robert Fanucci. The FAA banned Confederate symbols among Jacksonville Air Traffic Controllers in 2001 and our lawsuit alleging discrimination based on race, religion and national origin followed.  Amazingly, the court found that the two SCV members , both government employees, have no First Amendment right to wear Confederate symbols in the workplace – a workplace where no evidence of  disruption was presented.  A Notice of Appeal to the 11^th Circuit United States Court of Appeal was filed on May 13^th.  The 3^rd Circuit has a similar SLRC case (Storey v. Burns International Security) under consideration.  See related story below.

Last Minute News:  A Trio of 'Bloodless' Victories in NC!

Contrary to the Southern Poverty Law Center's carping, the SLRC does in fact manage to get things done, often behind the scenes and without any fanfare.  Here are three brand-new examples from North Carolina:

Ryan Johnson, grandson of Southern Heritage patriot Vicki Poston, will be allowed to wear his Confederate necklace, now that his school system has reversed its ban on Confederate clothing and symbols.  Ryan learned of the school board's change of heart in a letter from the same Superintendent who upheld the suspension of Katy Knight (the "A" student who had a Confederate patch on her knapsack) several years ago.

Kyle Jenkins, son of SCV member Dean Jenkins, may now wear Confederate clothing without fear of further "disciplinary" action at Cane Creek Middle School.  That school also overturned its own ban on Confederate items.

Robert McCullen, an eighth grader at North Duplin Junior/Senior High School, may now resume wearing the Confederate cap that caused him to be "disciplined."  The school has now completely revamped its dress code, which previously specifically banned Confederate symbols.

The common denominator in all these cases was the SLRC, which worked with the students and parents involved in each case to draft letters to the respective school boards acquainting them with the Castorina decision and pointing out that the schools' actions constituted constitutional and civil rights violations.  This is the SLRC's first "level" of response in such matters; the next step would have been for the parents to retain the SLRC as counsel.  (The next issue of the Update will examine in detail the SLRC's step-by-step method of dealing with school officials in Confederate symbols cases.)

And finally ... the judge said it himself.

            We thought our readers would be interested in the following exchange during recent oral arguments, between the judge and an attorney for the Defendants in the case of Curtis Blaine Storey v. Burns International Security Service.   This is one of several cases in which the SLRC is attempting to demonstrate that from a civil rights standpoint, Confederate Southern Americans are in fact a legitimate ethnic group and entitled to legal protection as such.  The judge, the Hon. Theodore McKee, is a Clinton appointee, but he is also capable of thinking for himself.  He gets it, which is more than can be said for the defendants' counsel.  Read on ...

BY THE COURT:

            How do we define national origin, that's an incredibly elusive concept.  Congress apparently has the good sense not to try to define it, figured they'd stick the courts with that job.  What is national origin?

 BY MR. STEPHEN:

            As Your Honor knows, the Espinoza case the court said by national origin we mean the country which your ancestors came from. 

BY THE COURT:

            But it doesn't mean that because as was said earlier a Puerto Rican can clearly bring a national origin claim; someone from the Basque my guess is, I know a case like this, but if it was someone working in a plant and the foreperson on the floor was from Spain, had a Spanish heritage, and one of the workers wanted to promote a symbol of the Basque region of Spain, that claim would probably be -- it may well be that the separatists in Canada who want to secede, might want to have a separate section for Quebec, if that were transplanted to the U.S. with a Canadian foreperson it may be -- I don't know, but it may be that the courts would say well, that is a national origin claim.  Clearly Chechnya, what's going on in Russia now, if you had a foreperson working for you has a complaint in the U.S., who was Russian, and found out that one of his or her employees was from the Chechnya region and wanted to promote symbols of Chechnyan independence, my guess is that that would be a Title VII claim. 

BY MR. STEPHEN:

            Yes, and without belaboring the point of whether the confederacy -- I don't want to get into a debate about whether the confederacy was a separate nation.  What I would ask this Court to ask itself is when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed is there any indication in the statutory language, the legislative history or anyplace else that the intent of those people who passed that in 1964 was to give protection as a national origin to Confederate Southern-Americans.  And I would submit that there is not a scintilla of evidence to suggest that that statute should be twisted in a way to give that sort of protection where it was not intended. 

BY THE COURT:

            Was there any intent to give protection to Cajuns when they passed the '64 Civil Rights Act? 

BY MR. STEPHEN:

            I would agree, Your Honor, that the Congress did not consider every potentiality that might arise in the future, but I would say given the strife that occurred during the discussion of that bill, it strains credulity to think that they would have wanted to protect the right of an individual to fly the confederate flag in the workplace.  In fact as the Courts --- 

BY THE COURT:

            Would it protect Cajuns, would they be able -- would a person of Cajun ancestry be able to bring a Title VII claim of national origin? 

BY MR. STEPHEN:

            There are cases, Your Honor, indicating that yes. 

BY THE COURT:

            I understand that, but in your view are they correctly decided or not? 

BY MR. STEPHEN:

            I've not thought that hard about whether those are correctly decided because I don't think they're applicable to our situation here, Your Honor.  Because I think again, Title VII does not give national origin protection to a Confederate Southern-American. 

BY THE COURT:

            One reason this case is so difficult it seems to me is because it comes with an awful lot of baggage.  And you read the briefs and there's an immediate visceral response, and it's what makes law so difficult because the same law, the same Title VII that applies to an employee is going to apply to everybody else in that workplace.  So we can't simply say that Congress didn't intend to deny the protection of national origin to a Confederate American, it's obvious Congress never thought of it.  Had they been asked my guess is almost certainly yeah, you would be right; but there's nothing in the record one way or the other to support that guess, and it's only a guess and there's a visceral reaction. 

BY MR. STEPHEN:

            Again, Your Honor, I guess looking at the argument that Mr. Storey makes, his ancestors are from the state of Virginia, one of the original Colonies, one of the signatories to the Constitution that created the one nation.  So his ancestry is by definition the United States of America.  We did cite the cases that indicate it was always one nation, but I think that's beside the point.  You have to look at the statutory language national origin, and there's nothing in that that would cause one to believe that somebody being from the state of Virginia, or in fact being from the South, or in fact being from states which were previously in the confederacy gives rise to a new nation. 

BY THE COURT:

            But isn't that always the case in a regional claim, the person who identifies with the region will always be a citizen of some country; the person from Basque is a citizen of Spain, the person from Quebec who wants to secede from Canada is a Canadian, the Chechnyans who are blowing up the Moscow subways are Russians? 

BY MR. STEPHEN:

            Yes, and I think that's the problem with trying to extend the statute and the concept of national origin at least with regard to the United States, two separate regions.  Now admittedly in other parts of the world that the geography is changing, but if we look at the United States of America I think it's a very bright line test for the Court to draw.  And as the EEOC and other courts have concluded that regionalism doesn't rise to the level of a national origin --- 

BY THE COURT:

            Is it a temporal inquiry, do we look to see how long it's been since hostilities have ceased to determine whether or not the regional fervor is still -- is something that we can be cognizant of in Title VII, the more time has passed the lesser the claim?  Or is it something more than that? 

BY MR. STEPHEN:

            No, I would suggest that it would not be a temporal thing... 

A Message from SLRC Chief Trial Counsel Kirk D. Lyons:

Dear Supporters, 

The annual Spring barrage of School heritage violations is well underway, so I thought this might be a good time to emphasize the vital nationwide role the SLRC is playing in defense of Confederate Southern Americans and their venerated symbols.

But first, a realistic appraisal of our place in the political/societal pecking order is instructive:

All Democratic Party Presidential hopefuls have openly denounced Confederate symbols. 

President Bush and his Republican friends take the Confederate vote for granted, and as a party have made significant moves to distance themselves from Confederate issues. Georgia Republican Governor Perdue showed that pre-election Republican promises are valueless.

Not a single Southern Governor attended the funeral for the crew of the CSS Hunley - and all were invited.

Chief Justice Moore and his supporters made it clear that Confederate flags were NOT welcome at Alabama Supreme Court vigils, while the 10 Commandments fight was playing out.

Corporate America is waging active warfare against Confederate symbols, witness DuPont, Fru-Con (International engineering firm), major grocery store chains (Bessinger), the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce, John Deere, Coburg Dairy, Bechtel Engineering.

Most heritage activists are keenly aware of the patent and latent hostility directed at the Confederate community, yet many of these same good people still have a childlike trust in our judicial system.  File a lawsuit, they believe, and “justice” will see that the good guys prevail. Nothing could be further from reality.

The first lesson any lawyer in our ranks must learn is : There is no such thing as justice in a vacuum and ALL CONFEDERATE FLAG CASES ARE POLITICAL. A "political" case is one in which either government (local, state or federal) or society has a vested interest in the outcome.  In political cases involving Confederate symbols, all the rules change. There is one rule or precedent for “protected species” and another set of “special rules” for handling Confederate cases. How else can the repeated denials of our quest for protection under the law be explained? Attorneys for the Point Lookout POW association and the new counsel on the Texas Plaques case found this great truth out the hard way.

It should be very clear by now that there is a pernicious institutional bias against Confederate symbols at almost all levels of the judiciary, reinforced by a hostile media establishment and the political impotence of the Confederate Southern American community.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has gotten into the act in its continuing demonization of the SLRC.  The current role they have assigned to us is : Loser.   According to the SPLC, we are no longer a dangerous element of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy (our former assigned role).  Instead,  the SLRC, which (they say) is incapable of winning a case,  is now just a “cash cow” feeding off the Confederate movement. (This from a “cash cow” organization with $135 million in assets that has been milking liberals since 1969).  And while we don’t win every case, neither do we attempt to suborn perjury to win, as the SPLC’s founder was arrested for in 1975.

Of all the recent federal Circuit court opinions involving Confederate Heritage in public schools, the 6^th Circuit Castorina case (won by the SLRC) is one of only two pro-Confederate free speech cases on the books. Castorina’s impact continues to climb and is responsible for the overturning of Confederate symbols bans in school districts in Tennessee, Kentucky and North Carolina.

Alone among law firms, the SLRC has pursued legal protection for Confederate Southern Americans, a move that has obviously scared and angered the system.  It is equally obvious that the system will move heaven and earth to crush our legal attempts to protect those of Confederate ancestry. The media, multi-national corporations and government have a heavily vested interest in keeping the millions of citizens with Confederate ancestry ignorant of their rights and heritage. DuPont, of course, is a classic illustration of what will happen from now on when Confederate Southern Americans challenge injustice in court. We are being told in case after case that there is NO legal protection for the Confederate community.  That there is NO first amendment protection for the Confederate community.  That there is NO workplace protection for the Confederate community.

Within this context, significant Confederate heritage cases have been lost by the Rutherford Institute and private counsel retained by the Point Lookout POW Association, Tennessee Division UDC, and SCV Divisions in Texas and Florida.

Are all these cases meritless? Are all these different lawyers losers? Incompetent? Of course not. All these cases were sound, well thought out and well pled.  And the cases asked only for simple justice.  But simply put they were doomed, the way a Czarist Officer would be doomed in front of one of Josef Stalin’s Courts.  Without a vocal and powerful constituency or outraged and focused citizenry behind the case, these cases will continue to be lost.   In other words, the Confederate Community cannot just “leave it to the lawyers” and expect to win.

In such a hostile climate, mere survival is a victory.  In its latest Intelligence Report, Morris Dees gloats over the expected demise of the SLRC. We are sorry to disappoint Mr. Dees.  We have survived the DuPont/Dunkirk campaign.  We hit our low point, held on and are ready to keep fighting - as long as it takes.  It took the Civil rights industry 60 years of courtroom action to overthrow segregation. We are committed to fight as long, if necessary for the legitimate rights of the Confederate Southern American people. We understand that putting the hypocrisy, venality and corruption of our society, judiciary and government UNDER OATH and ON THE RECORD, is itself a revolutionary act.  We shall continue to declare that the Emperor is naked as long as there is ink in our pen and breath in our bodies.

We will continue to pray for our people and nation.  Most especially we will continue to pray that those of Confederate ancestry will come together in their millions to exert the necessary pressures that will alert the politicians and judges of America to be true to their oaths of office.  Helping the DuPont 7 out in front of the DuPont plant every Thursday or joining the vigil in front of the Texas Supreme Court building is just a start.

And when you in the Confederate community are ready to properly fund the only full time Confederate law firm, we can start turning Dunkirk into Normandy beach-head. There is no financial shortcut to victory. The choice is up to you!!

Get involved, get active and give generously to the SLRC.  Your tax deductible pledge or donation will keep us in the fight.

Faithfully,

Kirk D. Lyons 

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