Indiana lawmakers passed Senate Bill 1 in 2022, prohibiting all abortions except in the cases of rape, incest, fetal abnormalities, or when the mother's life is at risk. On Aug. 21, more than a year after Gov. Eric Holcomb signed the bill into law, most abortions in Indiana officially became illegal, following a decision by the Indiana Supreme Court to deny a request from the ACLU and Planned Parenthood to rehear the case. Read the full Indy Star article here.
washington: It was Thanksgiving break of 1998 at Capital University Law School in Ohio, and Senator Mitch McConnell was on the phone for Prof. Bradley Smith. Mr. McConnell aides had already approached the conservative law professor about a spot on the Federal Election Commission, but Mr. Smith was hesitant. Now the senator himself was calling, and he was not going to be turned down. Long Battle by Foes of Campaign Finance Rules Shifts Landscape
If Congress enacts any part of the campaign finance legislation being debated in the Senate this week the sponsors may exult in their victory, but James Bopp Jr. will be waiting for them at the courthouse door.
James Bopp Jr. is driving his six-year-old Lincoln LS past the Vigo County Courthouse in Terre Haute, Ind. The huge limestone neo-Baroque structure looms over much of an otherwise sparse area at the edge of downtown. Bopp frequented the building when he augmented his fledgling general practice as a part-time prosecutor in the late 1970s. Along with personal injury cases, he handled welfare fraud. He is believed to have gotten the first murder conviction there against a woman; he also put away the youngest murder defendant, age 16. Bopp’s practice has mostly outgrown the old courthouse, now only an occasional venue for him in state election law matters. Read the full ABA Journal article here.
No sooner had we noted that conservative attorney James Bopp seemed to be setting up to sue the Federal Election Commission over an anti-abortion, anti-Obama ad, we got this news: Bopp sued the FEC Friday over an anti-abortion, anti-Obama ad. Read the full NPR article here.
A new loophole is being pried open in the campaign finance rules. It would enable federal candidates to once again solicit corporate money to finance organizations that promise to help them get elected. The idea comes from a lawyer who has done more than anyone else over the years to upset the status quo in America's political money laws — James Bopp Jr., of Terre Haute, Ind. Read the full NPR article here.
WASHINGTON -- In the first two weeks of January 2006, the Senate Judiciary Committee held confirmation hearings for President George W. Bush's second nominee to the Supreme Court, Samuel Alito. By replacing Justice Sandra Day O'Connor with Alito, Bush was replacing the Court's swing vote with a reliable conservative. This move would affect countless issues, but one that never came up during those confirmation hearings, campaign finance reform, would wind up the defining issue of Alito's early years on the Court. Read the full Huffington Post article here.
Not since the Gilded Age has our politics been opened so wide to corporate contributions and donations from secret sources. And the new era of big money has just begun. Jim Bopp, its intellectual architect, believes this is a good thing—the more money, the better, he says. Reformers (and most voters) disagree. Their battle is over the most-basic ideas of our democracy; at stake—according to both sides—is either the revitalization of politics, or its final capture by the powerful.
For decades, conservative attorney Jim Bopp has fought on the front lines of a regulatory war over how political campaigns are financed. As a staunch proponent of deregulation, Bopp has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court on multiple occasions, including during the 2008 Wisconsin Right to Life v. Federal Election Commission ruling that overturned the ban on corporate-funded issue ads ahead of an election — what federal regulators call “electioneering communications.” Read the full Center for Public Integrity article here.
Jim Bopp, the hard-charging lawyer who persuaded the Supreme Court to strike down crucial elements in the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, has a new target in his legal sights: a bank and taxation statute that hits Americans overseas. Read the full Washington Times article here.
BLOOMINGTON – R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. found himself alone backstage at the Indiana University Auditorium April 25, 1968. Before him stood U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, campaigning before a full house in the midst of the frenzied Indiana Democratic presidential primary. Behind him was an open door leading to RFK’s waiting car, and no one else. Read the full Greensburg Daily News article here.
Last month, a leaked draft opinion showed that the Supreme Court may soon overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case that provided a right to abortion across the country. That decision is not yet final, but as special correspondent Cat Wise reports, the work by abortion-rights opponents to arrive at this moment has been decades in the making.
When you think of the Christian Right and politics, probably you think of abortion, homosexuality, and religious exemptions. You probably don’t think of campaign finance. James Bopp does. Although you’ve probably never heard his name before, Bopp was one of the leading minds behind Citizens United and other efforts to deregulate political spending. He’s also been the lawyer for leading Christian Right organizations including the National Right to Life Committee, National Organization for Marriage, the Christian Coalition and Focus on the Family.
Just a few blocks from conservative activist lawyer Jim Bopp’s downtown Terre Haute law office sits the former home of labor icon Eugene Debs. Even closer is the statue of Max Ehrmann, whose poem “Desiderata” reminded people worldwide that each of them is “a child of the universe.” On the western edge of the downtown district, in the 300 block of old South Second Street, acclaimed and provocative novelist Theodore Dreiser was born. All four are native sons of America’s presidential bellwether, Vigo County. The place where a majority of voters have cast ballots for the winning presidential candidate in 30 of the past 32 elections, swaying back and forth from Republicans to Democrats, would seemingly possess ideological diversity. The differences between Bopp and Debs, Ehrmann and Dreiser reflect such an array of thought.
The Supreme Court might overturn Roe. It took decades of scorched-earth conservative politics to get here. Upholding Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban could severely damage American belief in the court’s legitimacy.
When Jim Bopp graduated from law school in 1973, overturning Roe v. Wade was fresh in his mind. He came up with a plan and hit the stacks, he recalled on Today, Explained, Vox’s daily news explainer podcast: “I would go to either the law school library or the Supreme Court Library at the State Capitol. I had to go find the books about the Supreme Court, the history of the Supreme Court, and particularly, overturning precedent.”
After Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, a group of conservative lawyers embarked on what would become a decades-long mission to reverse the ruling. One of those lawyers, James Bopp, explains how they succeeded and what comes next.
Four with Terre Haute ties among 250 'most influential' Hoosiers
PRESS RELEASE September 8, 2023 Contact: James Bopp, Jr. Cell Phone 812/243-0825; Phone 812/232-2434; Fax 812/235-3685; [email protected] INDIANA – On Thursday, James Bopp, counsel for Indiana Right to Life Victory Fund (“IRTL Victory Fund”), a PAC that makes only independent expenditures, ar...
PRESS RELEASE September 5, 2023 Contact: James Bopp, Jr. Cell Phone 812/243-0825; Phone 812/232-2434; Fax 812/235-3685; [email protected] Today Oregon Right to Life (“ORTL”) sued for relief from Oregon's requirement (the “Mandate”) that ORTL provide coverage in its employee health-insurance p...
PRESS RELEASE September 5, 2023 Contact: James Bopp, Jr. Cell Phone 812/243-0825; Phone 812/232-2434; Fax 812/235-3685; [email protected] On September 1, Missouri Right to Life (“MRTL”) filed a friend-of-the-court brief showing why an initiative to put an abortion right in the state constitut...
PRESS RELEASE August 25, 2023 Contact: James Bopp, Jr. Cell Phone 812/243-0825; Phone 812/232-2434; Fax 812/235-3685; [email protected] New Mexico – On August 17, 2023, a federal court ruled in favor of the Republican Party of New Mexico and other parties (“NMGOP”) concerned with the right to...
South Bend, Indiana – On Wednesday, The Irish Rover, an independent, non-profit, student publication “devoted to preserving the Catholic identity of Notre Dame” filed a motion to dismiss a defamation lawsuit that was filed against it by Dr. Tamara Kay, a professor at Notre Dame and an outspoken ...
PRESS RELEASE July 3, 2023 Contact: James Bopp, Jr. Cell Phone 812/243-0825; Phone 812/232-2434; Fax 812/235-3685; [email protected] In June, the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) asked the U.S. Supreme Court to accept for review cases involving undercover-journalist reporting of person...
PRESS RELEASE December 1, 2022 Contact: James Bopp, Jr. Cell Phone 812/243-0825; Phone 812/232-2434; Fax 812/235-3685; [email protected] Today, the National Police Association (“NPA”) and the National Fallen Officers Foundation (“NFOF”) asked the U.S. Supreme Court to limit statutory protecti...