CAIR finally loses one. Good thing Ballenger didn’t retain Rich Lowry as his lawyer. “Judge kills suit against ex-Rep. Ballenger,” from the Charlotte Observer, with thanks to Daniel Pipes:
WASHINGTON – A federal judge has dismissed a $2 million lawsuit filed against former Rep. Cass Ballenger by an American Muslim civil rights group for linking it to terrorists during an October 2003 interview with The Charlotte Observer.
In a seven-page decision released Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon agreed with the Hickory Republican’s argument that he made the comments “in the scope of his employment as a federal employee” and that the suit should be converted into one against the U.S. government.
And because a doctrine called sovereign immunity bars most suits against the federal government, Leon threw out the case.
In the newspaper interview, Ballenger blamed the breakup of his 50-year marriage partly on the stress of living near the group’s Capitol Hill headquarters, which was so close to the Capitol that he and his wife worried “they could blow the place up.”
He also called the Council on American-Islamic Relations “the fundraising arm for Hezbollah.”
In its lawsuit, CAIR said that these and other comments by Ballenger damaged its reputation and good name.
But it ain’t over:
Arsalan Iftikhar, CAIR’s national legal director, said Wednesday that the group plans to appeal the ruling, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary.