The Thomas More Law Center has filed a lawsuit claiming that the federal government is violating the First Amendment’s ban on establishment of religion by rescuing the giant insurer American International Group because, as one sliver of the broad range of business it does around the globe, AIG offers “Sharia-compliant” insurance products (also called “takaful”) structured to avoid the payment of interest and thus keep from violating Islamic religious law. First Amendment authority Eugene Volokh is scathing, if in a diplomatic way, about the lawsuit’s defects, diagnosing it as based on a kind of super-expansive Brennanite separationist theory, assuming that it is based on any coherent theory at all.
Dis-interest-ed insurance
The fact is that offering some products that are of special appeal to Muslims does not amount to supporting Islam any more than offering a wider choice of meatless entrees during Lent amounts to supporting Christianity. Given the action’s likely unsuccess in court, it’s hard to see what point it could have other than to stick a symbolic thumb in the eye of devout believers in Islam. First Amendment blogger Marc Randazza finds the suit “patently frivolous and based more in a hostility toward Islam than a true belief in a separation of church and state.”
What is the Thomas More Law Center? Established by Domino’s Pizza magnate and big-time conservative Catholic Tom Monaghan, it bills itself as “a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan,” and on its website as “The Sword and Shield for People of Faith”, though not to be sure faith of the Muslim variety; it “defends and promotes America’s Christian heritage and moral values, including the religious freedom of Christians, time-honored family values, and the sanctity of human life.” The center’s attorneys “have appeared regularly on national radio and television programs including the FOX News Channel (O’Reilly Factor, Hannity and Colmes, FOX & Friends), MSNBC (Dan Abrams), the Dr. Laura Show, O’Reilly Radio Factor, and hundreds of Christian radio networks.” In its best-known case so far, it suffered a solid defeat defending the introduction of “Intelligent Design” theory in the schools of Dover, Pennsylvania. Despite that setback, it apparently remains quite the little beehive of litigation, “handling over 259 legal matters in 43 different states“. One wonders if this new suit is typical of the quality of those actions.
Financial products geared toward particular kinds of believers are a classic capitalist adaptation to market demand, and you’d think “People of Faith” would be better served by encouraging the law to accommodate such products rather than stamp them out. Earlier this year I wrote for the Manhattan Institute’s magazine City Journal about a pending lawsuit in which the National Fair Housing Alliance is suing the GuideOne Mutual Insurance Company because the company offers an optional policy rider called “FaithGuard” that covers various risks associated with church participation and volunteering. The fair housing group claims that by offering a line of coverage that is unlikely to offer much value to religious nonbelievers, the insurer is somehow engaging in religious discrimination in violation of federal law. I found that position absurd, destructive, and indeed an entrenchment on the legitimate interests of religious believers. Is the Thomas More lawsuit any less so?
P.S. Welcome readers of the Washington Post’s “Political Browser“, which picked this post in its selection of “What’s Good on the Web”. Several readers, including Not a Potted Plant, point out that Islam-friendly financial products commonly are set up to avoid investments in enterprises involved in alcohol, sexuality, and the like, which you’d think would make a group like Thomas More at least a little more sympathetic to them. And one of Prawfsblawg’s small contingent of conservative contributors, Prof. Rick Esenberg of Marquette, writes: “There are certain cases that you just know are going nowhere. This is one of them.”
