Professor Roger Colinvaux of The Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law (Catholic Law) filed an amicus curiae brief in support of the defendants in American Alliance for Equal Rights v. Fearless Fund Management, LLC et al., filed in the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. The abstract is available for reading below, and the brief in its entirety is available here.

ABSTRACT

The Brief relates to a lawsuit alleging that a charity's use of race to award charitable aid violates section 1 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866. The Brief argues that the case is not just about the right-to-contract provisions of the Civil Rights Act but has much wider implications. At stake is potentially significant harm to charitable organizations and their freedom to fulfill their missions to further societal good under the broader law of charity. A ruling that implicates a charity’s right to exercise its well-rooted freedoms to determine its mission or advance social welfare by eliminating the effects of racial discrimination could have chilling effects on the more than 1.3 million charities registered in the United States and the many more millions of people they serve. The Brief encourages the Court to be mindful in any ruling of the role of charitable organizations in American society, the regulatory environment under which charities operate, the vast potential for uncertainty relating to providing charitable assistance to promote social welfare without risk of prosecution, and the chilling of lawful charitable speech to the detriment of civil society.