A year ago, we detailed how WorldNetDaily’s Bob Unruh hid inconvenient facts about a case pushed by a right-wing legal group in which a woman, Mary Anne Sause, is suing a Kansas police department for purportedly arresting her for praying. Well, there’s a new appeal in the case, and Unruh is back to write another press release for the woman’s lawyers at the First Liberty Institute.
The Nov. 20 article is about First Liberty’s seemingly doomed, grandstanding attempt to the Supreme Court to overturn a federal appeals court rejecting an earlier appeal of a court ruling against the woman. As usual, Unruh is long on uncritically repeating every claim about the case First Liberty makes and short on direct quotes from the court ruling being appealed.
Tellingly, the only direct quote from the ruling that portrays Sause’s case as “plausible.” Why? Because, as we noted, there are questions about whether the woman is telling the truth, and earlier courts have called Sause’s claims implausible. But the appeals court made it clear it wasn’t ruling on the facts of the case; it was assuming they were true for the purposes of examining the claim Sause has standing to sue for the purported violation of her constitutional rights.
The appeals court upheld a lower court’s ruling that even if Sause’s rights regarding freedom of religion were violated, the police officers involved have qualified immunity from being sued.
Because Unruh is too busy writing a press release for the First Liberty Institute instead of being the “news” reporter he purportedly is, his readers get stenography instead of a full and accurate recounting of the case.