Minnesota Muslim school counter sues ACLU
Posted by Ann Corcoran on July 31, 2009
Your tax dollars:
It is getting downright vicious out there in Minneapolis where the ACLU sued the Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TiZA), a Muslim charter school, over its religious teaching while it was using taxpayer money. Think about it, the liberal ACLU is watching out for the taxpayer more carefully than some faux conservative tax crusaders we know.
Now the plot thickens as TIZA is counter suing the ACLU. From the Minneapolis Star Tribune:
An Inver Grove Heights charter school accused of crossing the line between religion and public education is fighting back against the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota.
Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TiZA) says the ACLU, which sued the academy in January, defamed the school and hurt its ability to hire qualified teachers, according to counterclaims filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis.
In its suit, the ACLU alleged that the public school promotes the Muslim religion, violating the Constitution’s First Amendment.
The K-8 school has denied the allegations and said in court documents that Charles Samuelson, executive director of the Minnesota ACLU, injured the school’s reputation by saying publicly that TiZA is “a theocratic school … as plain as the substantial nose on my face.”
The State Department of Education is also in on the act, threatening to withhold funds because of teacher licensing problems. However, what interested me most in this paragraph from near the end of the story is, where are all these federal grants coming from?
As a result of the Education Department’s decision, which TiZA is appealing, state officials told the school last month that it would lose about $530,000 in state aid. The Education Department also withheld federal grants that had been awarded to the school. TiZA spokesmen have said the grants total close to $875,000.
Are other Islamic schools in the US getting federal grants?
More on TIZA last week, here.
2 Responses to “Minnesota Muslim school counter sues ACLU”
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Muslim charter school closing in Minnesota « Refugee Resettlement Watch said
[...] until the ACLU stepped in with a lawsuit. We’ve written about Tiza on previous occasions (here is one post in 2009, follow links back to older posts for the full [...]
faboutlaws said
Most states enforce a legal concept known as “absolute privilege” where any of the parties to a suit can say just about anything in a lawsuit or connected to a lawsuit and be immune from a defamation suit. The ACLU has little to worry about here and they will probably prevail early on a motion to dismiss. It remains to be seen how persistent the muslims’ lawyers will be. What needs to be done is to go after the school and its lawyers for bringing a baseless suit. Most states have a code provision to do this. Once the ACLU files its memorandum of law in support of its motion and lays out the current state of the law about the privilege along with its long history, the school would be well advised to drop the matter or risk having to pay the ACLU’s attorney’s fees. The muslims have been using “lawfare” to silence free speech for a long time. Going after them for fees when the case should never have been brought in the first place will slow that behavior down. They’ve been getting away with far too much for far too long. Time to play hard ball with them.