WASHINGTON, Jan. 12, 2012/Christian Newswire --
Today, on behalf of the adult stem researchers it represents, the Jubilee Campaign's Law of Life Project and their co-counsel at the Alliance Defense Fund and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, filed their opening Appellants' Brief asking the United States Court of Appeals to "reverse the district court's judgment in favor of Defendants, reverse the grant of Defendants' Motion for Summary Judgment and the denial of [Appellants'] Motion for Summary Judgment, and remand with directions to enter summary judgment for [Appellants]."
Appellants argue that The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Guidelines for funding human embryonic stem-cell research "are invalid because they violate [the federal law known as] the Dickey-Wicker Amendment" and because they were promulgated in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act. Accordingly, Appellants argue that they -- "not Defendants -- are entitled to summary judgment."
Appellants are appealing the United States District Court for the District of Columbia's July 27, 2011, decision dismissing their challenge to the Obama administration's unprecedented and unlawful federal funding of destructive human embryo research. Appellants argue that the district court erroneously interpreted and applied the Court of Appeal's April 29, 2011, ruling vacating the district court's August 23, 2010, preliminary injunction of the NIH Guidelines that the Obama Administration promulgated to permit the federal funding of "research in which" human embryos are "knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death."
While again affirming the standing of adult stem-cell researchers to challenge these regulations, the federal district court dismissed the case saying that it had no choice under the "mandate rule" but to follow the Court of Appeal's April 29 ruling that Congress' ban on human embryonic research was written in a sufficiently "ambiguous" fashion to ban the use of federal funds that risked the "injury or death" of human embryos, but not the use of federal funds to do research on the embryonic stem cells that were derived from such injury or destruction.
In the words of U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth explaining his July 27 decision: "While it may be true that by following the Court of Appeals' conclusion as to the ambiguity of 'research,' the Court has become a grudging partner in a bout of 'linguistic jujitsu,' Sherley, 2011 WL 1599685, at 22 (Henderson, J. dissenting), such is life for an antepenultimate court." ...
Read entire press release here.
