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IL POSTED The headline is terribly misleading. This statute is called a "fee-shifting" statute. It isn't public financing of anything, and there are other fee-shifting statutes to apply to other litigation. In this case, the government just happens to be the defendant, and the government just happens to be taxpayer financed. But that doesn't mean the fee shifts become public financing.

Under the aegis of its Foundation, the ACLU could get away with murder. Within that structure all kinds of financial misdeeds can be hidden. For example, the ACLU also receives private funds. It would be interesting to know what kind of financial activities officers of publicly-traded corporations engaged in and whether their donations to the ACLU were properly accounted for on company financial statements, whether shareholders were duly notified of corporate ACLU donations, whether the donations were made from corporate funds in the names of private individuals, and whether the ACLU itself properly accounted for these donations when filing official statements.