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A Bozeman think tank funded by big corporations is buying
the influence of federal judges who have pollution lawsuits
before them involving those same corporations, a national
public interest group claims.
The Community Rights Counsel in Washington, D.C., released
the findings Tuesday of its three-year study of Bozeman-based
Foundation for Research in Economics and Environment, or FREE,
which promotes free-market solutions to environmental problems.
The study concluded the vacations and seminars FREE holds
for federal judges -- at which environmental policies and
laws are discussed -- violate federal ethics rules. The lecturing
attorneys at those seminars also represented industry in lawsuits
pending before the judges.
CRC has filed ethics violations against three federal judges,
all of whom sit on FREE's board of directors.
"The most disturbing finding is the evidence that FREE
is manipulating its board membership and schedule to influence
the outcome of important environmental cases," Doug Kendall,
CRC's executive director, said Tuesday in a phone interview
from his Washington, D.C., office.
"That's why corporations and foundations that are opposed
to environmental protections fund FREE, because they think
it advances their litigation interests," he said.
But Pete Geddes, a FREE spokesman who also writes a column
for the Chronicle, said Kendall's attacks are groundless.
Geddes said that while FREE's seminars feature some of the
top environmental legal scholars from around the country,
the think tank also invites environmentalists to present their
point of view.
"In order to accept his claims, you've got to believe
one, that federal judges are basically mindless, and two,
that there's this vast conspiracy out there," Geddes
said. "(Kendall) believes the federal judiciary can be
bought for the price of a horsy ride in Montana."
The judges cited in the ethics complaint are Douglas H. Ginsburg,
chief judge of the Circuit Court of Appeals for the District
of Columbia; 6th Circuit Chief Judge Danny J. Boggs of Kentucky;
and 3rd Circuit Judge Jane Roth of Philadelphia.
The CRC study cites examples in which judges who had environmental
cases involving FREE's funders were flown to Montana on the
corporations' nickel.
For example, in American Trucking Assoc. v. EPA, the industry
was challenging clean-air protections.
Three U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges who were hearing
the case also heard a lecture from the trucking industry's
lawyer at a FREE seminar, the report said. That lawyer, Ed
Warren, had just been named to FREE's board, where he served
with Ginsburg.
And Warren's legal brief in the industry case was remarkably
similar to the lecture, Kendall said.
The appeals court ruled in the trucking industry's favor
in the case.
"It's pretty clear that things relevant to the case
were discussed with a D.C. judge," Kendall said.
Kendall said it is no coincidence that corporations that
want to gut America's bedrock environmental laws give money
to FREE. Those corporations' dislike of environmental regulations
melds perfectly with FREE's philosophy, he said.
"By their own admission, FREE is advancing a particular
perspective on environmental law through their programs,"
Kendall said. "That perspective advances the litigation
interests of their funders, and that's a problem."
But environmentalists who have given presentations at FREE
seminars defended the group. One of them is Don Snow, a former
environmental studies professor at the University of Montana
who has spoken at FREE events.
Snow said FREE goes to great pains to make bring different
viewpoints to its seminars. The presenters have represented
some heavy hitters in the environmental movement, such as
the Defenders of Wildlife and the National Wildlife Federation.
He called Kendall's attacks ridiculous because they paint
federal judges as savants who do as they're told.
"We're talking about leading people in the federal judiciary,
and these people don't become judges because they're morons,"
Snow said. "They become judges because of their expertise
in their fields."
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