March 5, 2015
On February 7, 2015, the PJ Media story “Advocacy Group Sues Bar Association, Will the Media Care Now?” tapped National Parents Organization as an expert source on cases where individuals have sued state bar associations with allegations that the associations violated first amendment rights when members’ dues funded resistance to shared parenting reform.
The story looked to National Parents Organization for details on the suit against the Nebraska Bar Association.
The story said, “A similar suit last year against the Nebraska Bar Association resulted in a complete and close to catastrophic restructuring of that body from a mandatory association to a voluntary organization. Interestingly, it too involved family law and shared parenting. From the National Parents Organization.
But in Nebraska, shared parenting forces have doggedly forced the legislature to confront the realities of children’s suffering in the wake of their parents’ separation. Year after year, they’ve improved legislation that would establish in law what’s actually in children’s interest — meaningful relationships with both parents.
That disturbed the anti-shared-parenting folks to such an extent that Nebraska State Bar Association President Marsha Fangmeyer was driven to outright public lying about the bill.
Embarrassing as that was, though, it was nothing to what came next. The same NSBA routinely lobbied the state legislature on behalf of or in opposition to whatever bills it chose, including shared parenting ones. As a mandatory state bar, that very plainly violated Supreme Court precedent holding that doing so violated the free speech rights of dissenting members. So blatant were the NSBA’s many violations that it found itself on the losing end of a lawsuit brought by aggrieved lawyers. The state Supreme Court’s ruling in the matter all but destroyed the NSBA altogether, slashing its fee structure and sharply restricting its regulatory functions.”