Is de-funding ACORN an unconstitutional “bill of attainder”?

[ashling]

Wexler
U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Boca Raton, and some other Democrats who voted against a measure to deny federal money to scandal-tainted ACORN said they did so because they regarded the action as an unconstitutional “bill of attainder.”

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A bill of attainder, forbidden in Article I, Section IX of the constitution, is a legislative act that imposes punishment on a specific person or group without a trial or hearing. But there’s legal precendent allowing a law that singles out an entity if “the law under challenge, viewed in terms of the type and severity of burdens imposed, reasonably can be said to further nonpunitive legislative purposes.”

UCLA law professor and blogger Eugene Volokh offers this discussion of the matter and concludes: “My rereading of the precedents leads me to confidently and unambiguously say, ‘I don’t know.’