COURT HEARS MOTION TO DISMISS GENOCIDE DENIERS’ CASE

Public Radio of Armenia
Sept 19 2006

In US District Court in Boston on Monday, Assistant Attorney General
William Porter argued for the dismissal of a lawsuit brought by a
Turkish group and others seeking to reinsert genocide denial materials
into the Massachusetts school human rights curriculum guide. In
support of the Attorney General’s position, the Armenian Assembly
filed an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief, and argued for
the rights of the defendants to recommend teaching the facts of the
Armenian Genocide.

The lawsuit, filed last year by the Assembly of Turkish American
Associations (ATAA), asserts that the Massachusetts Department of
Education’s decision to remove denialist materials in the school
curriculum guide amounts to "censoring" and therefore would be
a violation of the First Amendment. In court, Assistant Attorney
General Porter, who represented the Commonwealth, argued that the First
Amendment cannot be applied to statements by the government and said
that the Statute of Limitation requires that the case be dismissed.

Furthermore, the state pointed out that the plaintiffs have no
standing to sue since there was no harm suffered because students and
teachers may still independently access genocide denial information
from sources not recommended by the state’s curriculum guide.

"If the plaintiffs succeed with this lawsuit, there will be no stopping
point for the demands anyone can make for the inclusion in curriculum
recommendations, no matter how flawed or outrageous," said Attorney
Arnie Rosenfeld of Kirkpatrick and Lockhart Nicholson Graham LLP,
who argued the Armenian Assembly’s Amicus together with Board of
Trustees Counselor Van Krikorian.

Rosenfeld and Krikorian warned that if the court accepts the
plaintiffs’ First Amendment claims, it would open the door for any
extremist group, such as Holocaust deniers, to challenge curriculum
matters in court.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress