Description of Activities of the Legal Department
The Legal Department promotes the mission of the Center for Inquiry and its affiliates by filing amicus briefs in cases involving First Amendment rights, reproductive freedom, assistance in dying and other issues of importance to the Center and its supporters. Where appropriate, the Center for Inquiry may file its own lawsuit.
In addition, the Legal Department of the Center for Inquiry will consider offering free legal assistance to individuals who believe that their constitutional rights are in jeopardy or that they have experienced discrimination because they are not religious. If you believe there is an issue that should be brought to the attention of the Legal Department, please send an email describing your case to rlindsay@cfidc.org. Please include "Refer a Case" as your subject heading. Please be aware that submission of this information to the Legal Department does not guarantee that we can assist you. Although careful consideration will be given to all requests, we are limited in our resources. Therefore, our inability to offer representation should not be interpreted as judgment on the merits of your claim. If you believe you have a claim and we are unable to provide assistance, please contact a private attorney. Be aware that we do not handle any type of criminal proceeding..
As indicated, the Legal Department of the Center for Inquiry is leanly staffed and, by ourselves, we cannot become involved in all the litigation matters that deserve our attention. Especially on issues relating to church-state separation, we rely significantly on the First Amendment Task Force (FATF), a group of volunteer lawyers and others with legal experience, that is chaired by Edward Tabash, Esq. a prominent civil rights attorney. If you would like to join the FATF, please send an email to rlindsay@cfidc.org with "Sign Up for the First Amendment Task Force" as your subject heading. Please provide your contact information and any other relevant information in the body of the message. We are especially interested in having attorneys throughout the United States who would be able to assist us by acting as local counsel, whether or not they want to become substantively involved in the litigation.
In addition to litigating, the Legal Department oversees nonpartisan research, analysis and scholarship on matters of importance to the Center. This work encompasses selected constitutional law issues, but also includes issues relating to the intersection between science and society, with a special focus on issues in bioethics.
To illustrate the type of work in which we engage, and to provide you with information about important legal cases, we will post on this site any briefs we have submitted since the Legal Department opened its doors in July, 2006. Also on this site, you will find two recent Supreme Court briefs on constitutional law issues that were authored by the Legal Director, Ronald A. Lindsay, before he joined the Center for Inquiry. Relevant articles by Dr. Lindsay are also posted as well as a copy of a speech by Edward Tabash that discusses the importance of preserving a secular society. Please visit our site periodically to review new postings.
Ronald A. Lindsay is by training and experience both a lawyer and a philosopher. An honors graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law, he practiced for twenty-six years with the law firm of Seyfarth Shaw LLP prior to becoming Legal Director for the Center for Inquiry. Dr. Lindsay has significant appellate experience, having been lead attorney in approximately twenty federal and state appellate cases and having written approximately fifty appellate briefs. He has submitted amicus briefs in several prominent Supreme Court cases addressing constitutional law issues. Some of these briefs were written on behalf of the Council for Secular Humanism. In 2005, a group of leading legal scholars and bioethicists asked him to co-author an amicus brief in Gonzales vs. Oregon, the case that successfully challenged the Attorney General's authority to ban the use of controlled substances under Oregon's Death with Dignity Act. He holds an AV rating from Martindale-Hubbell, which is the highest rating that can be awarded to an attorney.
