Many Americans know that I have been targeted by the lawfare left because of my work helping former President Donald Trump lawfully and ethically bring forth challenges to potential illegalities during the 2020 president election.
But there’s an additional – arguably even bigger, but lesser discussed – reason that I am so fiercely attacked by these lawfare radicals.
It’s because they want me off the field because I’ve been at the center of literally hundreds of legal cases where I represented conservative causes and groups against leftwing Democrat policies and institutions.
I haven’t always won, but I’ve won far more often than I’ve lost. More importantly, my clients have won and, in the process, advanced conservative principles and upheld the Constitution.
Some of the cases in which I’ve been involved are among the most well-known and consequential in modern legal history, including overturning Roe v Wade in the Dobbs case, allowing citizens greater participation in the political process in Citizens United, protecting religious liberty in Hobby Lobby, giving groups the ability to resist overbearing government mandates in Little Sisters of the Poor, protecting the right of the Boy Scouts to choose its leaders and not be forced to accept a homosexual man as a scout leader, and trying to protect the property rights of Americans in the Kelo case when government colludes with private corporations to take someone’s home to make way for a company parking lot.
But let me tell you about a couple of lesser-known cases that you may not know about, two of which were successful and the other where the government was able to use its power to run out the clock and thus advance a terrible social policy that damages us to this day.
In 1996, the State of Ohio passed a law that provided vouchers that enabled parents to escape failing public schools and send their children to private schools, including private religious schools. The law was immediately challenged as a violation of the Constitution’s Establishment Clause and eventually made its way to the Supreme Court. Former Attorney General Ed Meese and I filed an important brief supporting the law, and the Supreme Court agreed, upholding the law in 2002.
Similarly, the state of Arizona adopted its own parent-driven school choice law in 1997. Such laws remain one of the most important tools for parents to escape failing government schools controlled by teachers’ unions in their community. Arizona’s law did so by providing taxpayers with tax credits for donations to “School Tuition Organizations (STO).” Much of the STO funding ended up paying for scholarships for students to attend schools operated by religions institutions.
Naturally, the left hated this, not only because it gave parents an escape hatch away from government-run schools but because many parents used the escape to send their kids to better-performing private religious schools. The at-the-time notorious Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals invalidated the Arizona law in 2009, but I filed an amicus brief in support of parents in the Supreme Court, which in 2011 upheld the law.
Now a case that had a different outcome.
In 2013 Democrats in the California Legislature passed a law (AB 1266) providing access to sex-segregated school facilities (restrooms, showers, locker rooms, etc.) and school athletic competitions based on a student’s “gender identity” and not the student’s actual sex. Parents were outraged that biological boys would be allowed to compete against girls in sports and invade private areas reserved for girls, violating their privacy and risking their safety. A coalition of parents formed and worked exceedingly hard for weeks to gather some 115,000 more signatures than the 504,000 signatures needed to qualify a statewide referendum, giving voters the ability to overturn the law at the 2014 general election. Polls showed the referendum would very likely have succeeded in invalidating the law.
Shockingly, elections officials announced that – despite the 115,000 excess signatures submitted – the measure supposedly lacked a sufficient number of valid voter signatures needed to qualify. I represented the parent coalition in suing the Democrat Secretary of State, but some very disturbing facts soon came to light. First, there was no provision in law for a referendum sponsor to challenge signature validity decisions of elections officials. Great deference was granted to these election officials, most of whom worked for Democrat office holders who opposed the referendum. Moreover, in order to prevail, my client would be forced to go county-by-county and petition-by-petition to identify specific signatures that should have been counted, but weren’t. Such a process would have taken many months – pushing the outcome far past the 2014 ballot — and would have cost many hundreds of thousands of dollars to complete.
The timing and cost of the process to challenge the government ran out the clock and the “gender identity” legislation went into effect. Many of the concerns that my clients identified did in fact come to pass, and the law that took effect went on to fuel what is to this day a raging national debate about transgender ideology and its impact on kids and schools.
It’s this type of work on behalf of conservative causes and groups that explains why the left hates me so much, and why they are determined to ruin me.
I’ve already been forced to spend well over $1 million in legal bills to defend against their attacks, and am facing millions more in coming months. I can’t handle that burden alone and urgently need people of good will to help.
Your donation of $25, $50, $100, $250, $500, $1,000 or more will make a real difference to my legal defense team. We’re battling on so many fronts that it is exceedingly hard to keep up with the demands.
I am determined to defeat the radical lawfare left and return to the field of battle where I can once again devote my time and energies to fending off abuses by powerful government officials and fighting for the constitutional rights of Americans.
I would be very grateful for anything you can do to help in that regard. Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
John Eastman
Constitutional Scholar
Former Attorney for President Donald Trump