Landmark Legal Foundation

The Landmark Legal Foundation is a conservative non-profit 501(c)3 legal advocacy group, with a $1 million annual budget.[1] The President as of 2018 is Richard P. Hutchison. Through litigation and direct interfacing with government agencies, Landmark Legal advances a conservative platform of limited government and has litigated a number of cases up to and before the US Supreme Court.[2]

History

Landmark was founded in 1976 as an offshoot of The National Legal Center for the Public Interest with its focus on protecting individual rights, challenging the scope and authority of government, defending free enterprise, and exposing teachers' union fraud.[3] Landmark has made efforts to scale back funding for non-profits which it holds to be political in nature but list no political expenditures on tax forms. The National Education Association has often been the subject of complaints to the IRS made by Landmark Legal. Throughout its history Landmark Legal Foundation has filed lawsuits against labor unions and has fought for legislation that would allow parents to direct public education funding toward their children's private schools, homeschooling, or school of choice.

In 1990, Landmark was involved in a civil rights court case when it questioned the legality of taxes to pay for the effect of segregation in Kansas City; the case went to the Supreme Court, which decided the taxes were legal.[4]

In 2007 the Landmark Legal Foundation nominated commentator Rush Limbaugh, who sits as an unpaid member of its advisory board, for a Nobel Peace Prize.[5]

Donors to Landmark include the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation and ExxonMobil.[6][7]

In 2016, the director of Penn State Earth System Science Center, climatologist Michael E. Mann, named Landmark as part of an alleged smear campaign against him after his testimony on the C-SPAN TV network about the threat of human-caused climate change.[8][9]

In 2015, a federal judge found that the Environmental Protection Agency had handled Landmark's 2012 Freedom of Information Act request in a "suspicious" manner, but the judge did not impose sanctions because Landmark had not established that the EPA acted in bad faith.[10]

Supreme Court of Arizona Justice Clint Bolick has worked for the foundation.[11] Former Whitewater special investigator Kenneth Starr has also worked with Landmark.[12] Former U.S. Attorney General and counselor to President Reagan Edwin Meese is currently the Second Vice Chairman of Landmark Legal Foundation.[13]

Notes

  1. ↑ Organizational Profile – National Center for Charitable Statistics (Urban Institute)
  2. ↑ Landmark Legal Foundation on corporatepolicy.org
  3. ↑ Landmark Legal Foundation
  4. ↑ https://www.nytimes.com/1990/04/19/us/kansas-city-rights-leaders-praise-supreme-court-ruling.html
  5. ↑ "Landmark Legal Foundation Nominates Rush Limbaugh for 2007 Nobel Peace Prize".
  6. ↑ http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Landmark_Legal_Foundation
  7. ↑ http://www.corporatepolicy.org/issues/Landmark.htm
  8. ↑ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-e-mann/anatomy-of-a-smear-or-how-the-right-wing-denial-machine_b_10997280.html
  9. ↑ https://www.c-span.org/video/?411154-1/democratic-platform-drafting-committee-holds-platform-hearing-phoenix
  10. ↑ https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/judge-blasts-epa-for-suspicious-handling-of-conservative-groups-foia/2015/03/02/7f49fee0-c100-11e4-9ec2-b418f57a4a99_story.html
  11. ↑ Steven Teles, 'Compassionate Conservatism, Domestic Policy, and the Politics of Ideational Change', in Crisis of Conservatism? The Republican Party, the Conservative Movement, & American Politics After Bush, Gillian Peele, Joel D. Aberbach (eds.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, p. 198
  12. ↑ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/tales-from-the-inquisition-the-prosecutor-19980319
  13. ↑ http://www.landmarklegal.org/our-staff

Coordinates: 39°04′15″N 94°35′26″W / 39.0708°N 94.5905°W / 39.0708; -94.5905

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