Biden DOJ attempts to throttle speech of advocacy group

 PJ Media:

On Sept. 20, we reported on an outrageous subpoena served by the U.S. Justice Department on the Eagle Forum of Alabama. Fortunately, in the face of vigorous opposition expressed in amicus briefs filed by literally dozens of conservative organizations supporting the Eagle Forum’s motion to quash (i.e. throw out) the subpoena, Justice Department lawyers caved and narrowed their request, as the judge in the case put it, to “1%” of what they were demanding before.

It gets better. At a hearing on Oct. 14 on the motion, according to a transcript we have obtained, federal Judge Liles C. Burke castigated the Justice Department for its “vastly overbroad and unduly burdensome” subpoena and declared that he “would have issued an order to quash” the subpoena if the Justice Department had not withdrawn almost all of it. And Burke hinted that he would be open to considering sanctions against the Justice Department.

A quick refresher about this case is in order: The usual left-wing advocacy groups and the Biden Justice Department sued Alabama after it passed the Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act, which bans puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgery to alter the biological sex of a minor. They claim the law violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Eagle Forum is not a defendant in the lawsuit. It is a small, non-profit membership organization with lots of volunteers – ordinary citizens — and two employees, one full-time and one half-time. Its members, who were concerned over this issue, did what all of us have the right to do under the First Amendment. They spoke out, made speeches, organized meetings, and talked to their state legislators.

But because of their advocacy, they were targeted by the Justice Department with a massive, capacious subpoena that sought everything the Eagle Forum and its volunteers have done or said for the last five years on this issue. It was clearly an attempt to intimidate the organization, deter its activism, and perhaps punish them for exercising their First Amendment rights on a policy issue the Biden administration disagreed with.

As we pointed out before, nothing that the Justice Department was demanding had any relevance whatsoever to this lawsuit since the Eagle Forum is not the legislature that passed this law. Judge Burke himself echoed that point when he asked “how in the world could what the Department of Justice is asking for possibly be relevant to this case and its outcome,” given that the issue is “whether or not this statute is constitutional?”
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This is not the only matter where the Biden DOJ has overreached to push the evils of liberalism.