{"id":2680,"date":"2008-12-16T11:33:55","date_gmt":"2008-12-16T16:33:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=2680"},"modified":"2008-12-16T11:35:20","modified_gmt":"2008-12-16T16:35:20","slug":"the-church-or-mosque-of-aig","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2008\/12\/the-church-or-mosque-of-aig\/","title":{"rendered":"The Church (or Mosque?) of AIG"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Thomas More Law Center has filed a complaint<\/a> on behalf of a Michigan resident against Treasury Secretary Paulsen and the Board of Governors of the Fed. It alleges that the bailout of AIG violates the Establishment Clause.<\/p>\n

Now, I admit that I have had many misgivings about the ongoing orgy of bailouts, but, I must say, that’s one that did not occur to me. I’ve worried that bailouts distort the market, reward incompetence, create moral hazard, and, in the case of AIG, foot the bill for “team building” junkets. But I hadn’t thought that it established a religion. What gives?<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

It turns out that AIG has a business unit that offers Shariah compliant financial products. In particular, it offers Takaful<\/em> lines of insurance which, according to the complaint, invest in no businesses that are haram<\/em> (or unIslamic). The Shariah compliant\u00a0business units also\u00a0pay the zakat, <\/em>a religious tax that supports only Islamic charities.<\/p>\n

Let’s get two things out of the way. There are certain cases that you just know are going nowhere. This is one of them. Second, the complaint is chock full of assertions about the nature of Islam and the role of Shariah compliant financial products in funding terrorism that have nothing to do with whatever legal arguments might be made in favor of the plaintiff’s position.<\/p>\n

But even if the case is going nowhere, can we at least discern a semi-plausible argument on its behalf? Let me try so you don’t have to.<\/p>\n

The idea, I suppose, is that, by taking an ownership position in AIG, the government somehow endorses everything that the company does or converts AIG’s activities into state action. This is distinct from, say, pension fund investments because the state operates here as an active rather than a passive investor.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure that the facts here support such an argument, but let’s assume that we can get this far because it’s no fun if we can’t. Imagine the government bought AIG lock, stock, and barrel.<\/p>\n

Could the government – as AIG – promote\u00a0and sell Shariah compliant products? Does doing so constitute an endorsement of Islam or violate the Lemon<\/em> test?<\/p>\n

One approach might be to say that this is like the private vouchers upheld in Zelman<\/em>. Just as the State of Ohio offerered funds that could be directed to religious uses by private choice, the government as AIG offers a religiously themed product that will either be purchased or not according to the preferences of its customers.<\/p>\n

The problem, however, is that the government is actually structuring the religious alternatives. It is making the choice to offer products that are Shariah compliant or, if we expand the hypothetical, that are consistent with Catholic social teaching.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Imagine that government decided to\u00a0charter religious schools as a way to compete with privately run Catholic and Lutheran and Islamic schools. Wouldn’t that\u00a0raise establishment clause concerns?<\/p>\n

Again,\u00a0it doesn’t seem that the facts\u00a0of the AIG bailout support such an argument, and I think that the Thomas More\u00a0Center is doing a favor for\u00a0those who seek a largely secular public by arguing, as they must in this case,\u00a0for a wildly aggressive definition of establishment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cross posted at Prawfs.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Thomas More Law Center has filed a complaint on behalf of a Michigan resident against Treasury Secretary Paulsen and the Board of Governors of the Fed. It alleges that the bailout of AIG violates the Establishment Clause. Now, I admit that I have had many misgivings about the ongoing orgy of bailouts, but, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion-law","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2680\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}