A Scottsdale-based religious defense fund has cast itself into the middle of Arizona politics.

The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), established in 1994 by more than 30 Christian ministries to train attorneys and finance legal cases involving religious freedom, family values and abortion, is representing seven legislators in two lawsuits against the state over gay rights issues.

The non-profit organization, which a 2001 financial report showed had $15.4 million in the bank, has more than 700 paid and volunteer attorneys to oppose groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, ADF’s Web site says.

ADF is taking on Governor Napolitano in court over her executive order banning discrimination against gays by state agencies she oversees.

ADF also represents Sen. Mark Anderson, R-Dist. 18, who seeks to intervene and defend the state’s law against same-sex marriage in a case brought by two Phoenix men who were turned down for a marriage license.

ADF says it has backed more than two dozen cases that have gone to the U.S. Supreme Court and won 21 of them.

Richard Jefferson, ADF’s senior director of national media relations, said, “A lot of people are concerned about these cases.”

Lawmakers Challenge June 21 Executive Order

Five House members and one senator, all Republicans, allege Ms. Napolitano’s June 21 executive order usurped the Legislature’s authority to set employment policies and procedures for state government.

Reps. Andy Biggs, R-Dist. 22, Linda Gray, R-Dist. 10, John Allen, R-Dist. 7, Joe Hart, R-Dist. 3, Doug Quelland, R-Dist. 10, and Sen. Thayer Verschoor, R-Dist. 22, have petitioned the Arizona Supreme Court to overturn the governor’s order. The court can act whenever it wishes to accept or decline the case.

“Governor Napolitano has shown a tin ear for the Constitution and the will of the people of Arizona,” Mr. Allen said. “Her executive order is an unconstitutional effort to legislate and reverse policies instituted by the elected members of the Legislature.”

Mr. Biggs said, “Last November, Arizona voters elected a governor, not a king. By usurping her constitutional authority, the governor has demonstrated her preference for opinion polls over good policy.”

The ADF lawsuit is the second case in which the governor’s executive authority has been challenged by legislators. She recently hired two attorneys to defend her in a suit brought by Republican legislative leaders over some of her line-item vetoes to the 2004 budget.

“I’m beginning to think that some of the legislators want to hire a lot of lawyers over the summer . . .” Ms. Napolitano said on July 30.

The governor said she had only “skimmed” the ADF suit, but added, “I don’t see any merit to the lawsuit at all.” She said she hadn’t decided whom to hire to defend her in that case.

Sen. Ken Cheuvront, D-Dist. 15, said the governor has authority over the hiring and firing practices of her employees.

“Why are we wasting state resources at a time when we have a fiscal crisis?” asked Mr. Cheuvront. “What they’re saying pretty much is we shouldn’t allow the state to have the ability to hire someone because they are gay or lesbian.”

Gary McCaleb, an ADF attorney, said Arizona law prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of race, religion, sex, age, disability or national origin. “Only the Legislature can change that,” he said.

As a member of the Senate and formerly of the House, Sen. Bill Brotherton, D-Dist. 14 has introduced bills (S1255 in 2003 and H2308 in 2002) to add gender identity and sexual orientation as protected categories in employment law. Both bills were held in committee.

Mr. Cheuvront said the move by ADF and Mr. Anderson, chairman of the Senate Family Services Committee, to intervene in a same-sex marriage case is an affront to the state.

“If I were the attorney general, I would be offended to say that I could not be objective and defend the state in a lawsuit that is absolutely ridiculous,” Mr. Cheuvront said.

ADF filed a motion on behalf of Mr. Anderson, who is not a lawyer, in the Arizona Court of Appeals on July 21 to permit the senator to “argue in support of the traditional marriage and the challenged statutes,” an ADF news release says.

Mr. Anderson could not be reached for comment.

The Legislature in 1996 banned same-sex marriage (S1038; Chap. 348 of the 1996 laws) by votes of 50-5 in the House and 21-9 in the Senate.

A gay couple, Harold Donald Standhardt, 34, and Tod Alan Keltner, 36, sued the state and the clerk of Maricopa County Superior Court when their application for a marriage license was rejected July 1. Their attorney, Michael Ryan, said he bases the lawsuit on a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June that struck down a Texas law that made homosexual sex a crime (Lawrence v. Texas). He seeks to have Arizona’s law against same-sex marriage ruled unconstitutional.

ADF attorney Jordan Lorence said the Arizona lawsuit overstates the significance of the ruling in the Texas case.

“The court only found a liberty interest protected by the due process clause for consensual sodomy by adults alone in private,” he said. “There’s nothing more to it. The right to sodomy is not the right to marry.”

Mr. Jefferson of the ADF said he could not estimate how much ADF will end up spending on the two Arizona lawsuits. —