Boy Scouts' Bankruptcy Plan Upheld in Court

Opponents argued that $2.4B deal stripped abuse survivors of their rights 

By Newser Editors and Wire Services Mar 28, 2023 

A federal district court judge has upheld the approval of a $2.4 billion bankruptcy reorganization plan aimed at resolving tens of thousands of child sexual abuse claims against the Boy Scouts of America. The ruling docketed Tuesday rejects arguments by non-settling insurance companies and attorneys representing dissenting abuse survivors that the reorganization plan was not proposed in good faith and improperly strips the insurers and survivors of their rights, the AP reports. The ruling follows a September decision in which US Bankruptcy Judge Laurie Selber Silverstein approved the plan. The plan would allow the Irving, Texas-based Boy Scouts of America to continue operating while compensating tens of thousands of men who say they were sexually abused as children while involved in Scouting.

More than 80,000 men have filed claims saying they were abused as children by troop leaders around the country. Plan opponents say the staggering number of claims, when combined with other factors, suggests that the bankruptcy process was manipulated. While affirming Silverstein’s description of the proceedings as "an extraordinary case by any measure," US District Court Judge Richard Andrews found no fault with her ruling. "Based on the record, the appellants have failed to put forth evidence that would demonstrate clear error in the bankruptcy court’s careful findings of facts," Andrews wrote.

The BSA issued a statement describing the ruling as "a pivotal milestone" that "solidifies a path forward for both survivors and Scouting." "We look forward to the organization’s exit from bankruptcy in the near future and firmly believe that the mission of Scouting will be preserved for future generations," the statement added. 

My Take - Let's go to my files and do some history to get this in it's proper perspective.  

Boy Scouts Lose Philadelphia Lease in Gay-Rights Fight, By IAN URBINA DEC. 6, 2007 - For three years the Philadelphia council of the Boy Scouts of America held its ground. It resisted the city’s request to change its discriminatory policy toward gay people despite threats that if it did not do so, the city would evict the group from a municipal building where the Scouts have resided practically rent free since 1928.Hailed as the birthplace of the Boy Scouts, the Beaux Arts building is the seat of the seventh-largest chapter of the organization and the first of the more than 300 council service centers built by the Scouts around the country over the past century.  But over the years the fight between the city and the Scouts was about more than this grandiose structure in Center City.  Municipal officials said the clash stemmed from a duty to defend civil rights and an obligation to abide by a local law that bars taxpayer support for any group that discriminates. Boy Scout officials said it was about preserving..........To Read More....

Boy Scouts' 'perversion' files set to be released, By Nigel Duara October 18, 2012 - Confidential files kept by the Boy Scouts of America on men they suspected of child sex abuse are set to be released after a two-year-long court battle.  The anticipated release of the files on Thursday by Portland attorney Kelly Clark will reveal 20,000 pages of documents the Scouts kept on men inside — and in some cases outside — the organization believed to have committed acts of abuse. The court-ordered release of the so-called perversion files from 1965 to 1985 has prompted the organization to pledge that they will go back into the files and report any offenders who may have not been reported to the police when alleged abuse took place.  That could prompt a new round of criminal prosecutions for offenders who have so far escaped justice.  To Read More….

California pols could target tax status of Boy Scouts, youth groups over ‘discrimination’, August 29, 2013 by Cowboy Byte - California lawmakers are cruising toward a final vote on a bill that could threaten the tax-exempt status of American-as-apple-pie groups — ranging from the Boy Scouts to Little League — if their membership policies are found to be discriminatory.If passed, the bill, SB 323, would remove an exemption from state taxes for any nonprofit youth group that discriminates on the basis of “gender identity, race, sexual orientation, nationality, religion, or religious affiliation.” Well-known organizations like Girl Scouts of the USA, Boy Scouts of America, and Little League International Baseball and Softball were cited in the bill, which was introduced in February by Democratic state Sen. Ricardo Lara. ………To Read More 

Boy Scouts of America Votes to Allow Gay Scout Leaders - July 29, 2015 By Pete Williams - The governing body of the Boy Scouts of America voted Monday to end its decades-long ban on gay scout leaders. The organization's national executive board, meeting in Texas, concluded that the policy of excluding gay adults "was no longer legally defensible." The decision was approved by 79 percent of the board. While the national ban is gone, effective immediately, local scouting units retain the ability to reject gay applicants for leadership positions if hiring them would violate the unit's religious beliefs. The Boy Scouts national organization said it would defend any local scouting group's "good faith refusal" to admit a scouting leader based upon the group's religious principles............. 

Boy Scouts of America may declare bankruptcy, By Max Jaeger December 12, 2018 - The Boy Scouts of America is mulling declaring bankruptcy amid flagging membership and an avalanche of costly sex abuse allegations, according to the Wall Street Journal.  Leaders have hired Chicago law firm Sidley Austin for help in a potential Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing, sources told the outlet.  The organization has been fending off lawsuits over alleged abuse, including one filed by four former scouts who called the club a “pedophile magnet” and alleged that they were molested by scoutmaster Waldron Ackerman between 1974 and 1976............To Read More

The Marxist-Progressive War on the Boy Scouts, Paul Kengor June 1, 2018 -Today’s progressives have completed the takeover and destruction communists first started calling for more than a century ago. The title of this article will raise eyebrows even among conservatives, but read on. The title is accurate and undeniable.  The left has succeeded in driving a final nail in the coffin of the Boy Scouts as it once was. The organization is now a shell of its self. It capitulated first on “gay” scout leaders, then on “transgender” scouts, and now on girls joining the Boy Scouts.  Progressives bask in their triumph, dancing on the grave of an organization they never wanted to build up; it was an organization they wanted to take down. For the left, this is less about giving something to girls than taking something from boys. It’s another scalp on the cultural-ideological wall.  Lest anyone think this isn’t a take-down, or a fundamental transformation, well, consider that the Boy Scouts of America, founded in 1910, will now be called simply “Scouts BSA” for those ages 11 to 18 (a change openly celebrated with puffy propaganda pieces by PC-stylists at the BSA website). This is a coerced inclusion of gender-neutral “Cub Scouts.”........To Read More....

 

Liberalism Bankrupts the Boy Scouts, George Neumayr December 14, 2018, - PC policies can be costly. The other day President Trump called Rex Tillerson “dumb as a rock.” That was payback for an interview in which his former Secretary of State called Trump undisciplined and a poor study. Trump had selected Tillerson for the job based in part on the recommendation of Robert Gates, Obama’s Secretary of Defense, according to press reports. Gates and Tillerson knew each other largely from the Boy Scouts, where they both held leadership positions during its transition from a traditional organization to a politically correct one. As president of the Boy Scouts, Gates had endorsed the adoption of the LGBT agenda, urging the organization to succumb to the demands of its critics. He cast adherence to Christian principles, not their betrayal, as the real threat to the organization’s future.

 

“The status quo in our movement’s membership standards cannot be sustained,” he said. Don’t resist “the social, political and judicial changes taking place in our country,” he argued. Shamefully, Gates presented his counsel of capitulation under the guise of dutifulness, putting a perverse spin on the Boy Scouts code: 

 

“Our oath calls upon us to do our duty to God and country. The country is changing, and we are increasingly at odds with the legal landscape at both the state and federal levels. And, as a movement, we find ourselves with a policy more than a few of our church sponsors reject, thus placing Scouting between a boy and his church.”

 

As once-great institutions teeter under the weight of failed liberalism, you would have to be dumb as a rock to stake their “survival” on even more of it. And yet that is often the counsel given by everyone from Gates and Tillerson to Pope Francis and his hapless bishops. If history has taught us anything, it is that liberalism is not an agent of expansion but an acid that burns through everything it touches...........To Read More.......

This was completely foreseeable.  So what do those who promoted this have to say now? Ooooops?

The position of the BSA has been known since it's inception, and yet no one noticed anything "discriminatory" about their policy since it's founding in 1908 in Britain and in 1910 in the United States. Foundationaly the Scouts promoted the moral concepts "To help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight"............[to be] "brave, clean, and reverent"......"Boy Scouts of America believes that no member can grow into the best kind of citizen without recognizing an obligation to God." So everyone knew that was foundational to their organization and everyone thought it was fine, until now. 

Now it's discriminatory!

We've lost our minds because the nation's churches have abandoned the very moral foundations they claim is foundational to their faith. The nation's "Christian" churches have abandoned the Bible, betrayed their oaths to God, embraced leftist heresy and the nation has followed and is paying the penalty for the failure of it's "leaders". 

The BSA kept track of this kind of thing for years in order to protect the children, which is what I would expect, and it is what most would expect, unless your values are different. The BSA was actually sued for having “policies which prohibit atheists, agnostics and "open or avowed" homosexual people from membership in its Scouting program as directly violating its fundamental principles and tenets.  BSA had, in the past, denied or revoked membership status or leadership positions for violation of these foundational principles. 

The BSA contended these policies are essential in its mission to instill in young people the values of the Scout Oath and Law", and the press and the leftist railed against them. We had a president and a presidential aspirant that publicly stated that they “oppose the ban on gay scouts.” Cities have even prevented them from using public facilities for their activities because of the stand on homosexuality. 

And now untold numbers of children have been sexually violated, and they've bankrupted this organization, but what should be done about the "leader's" who made these decisions and the cities and organizations that opposed the moral standards of the BSA? 

With this bankruptcy decision, apparently nothing will be done. And once again we find everything the left touches is a disaster. That's history, and that history is incontestable, so why do we ignore almost 235 years of history and listen to these people?