“Contemplation of Justice” Statue on the Supreme Court Plaza by James Earle Fraser. (David, Flickr, CC BY 2.0)
“One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.” That is the title of Omar El Akkad’s 2025 National Book Award–winning nonfiction book, based on the full quotation:
“One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.”
“This” means the genocide of Palestinians – in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria — in the war for “greater Israel.”
Our world now witnesses the evisceration of internationally accepted standards as well as U.S constitutional and statutory law, lowering the moral bar to more atrocities.
What can we, as citizens and taxpayers, do to counter the prevailing lawlessness and trampling of nearly all basic legal principles and sense of human decency as genocide is waged?
Article VI of the U.S. Constitution makes the Genocide Convention the “supreme law of the land.” The convention was thereafter statutorily implemented into U.S. law as a serious crime carrying the death penalty.
The president and his (newly retitled) “secretaries of war” do not and cannot enjoy unfettered authority, unreviewable by the judiciary, to violate the Constitution per their own judicially-created “political question doctrine” — the mistaken notion that the courts don’t have the power to judge foreign policy decisions of the executive branch even when ostensibly unconstitutional.
Nor can this “political” fog be employed to circumvent the “Tax and Spend Clause” of the Constitution, which specifically limits congressional spending to be for the “general welfare” of U.S. citizens, and which gives taxpayers like ourselves the standing to sue.
The U.S.-funded Israeli genocide makes taxpayers complicit in the “crime of crimes” through this unlawful expenditure of our public funds.
Given this situation, 15 months ago a group of us in Minnesota commenced a civil lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota against our legislative and executive branch “leaders” who voted for and then implemented U.S. “supplemental funding” for the arming of Israel’s genocide.
We Consider Tax-Payer Funding of Genocide Illegal
Our suit simply asked for a judge to rule on whether the voting of tax-payer funding of genocide is against the law.
We sought judgment on the despicable commission of the worst crime imaginable: mass-murder genocide, which includes the wanton killing of tens of thousands of babies and children. Surely, we thought, U.S. federal judges who have spent the better parts of their lives invested in learning, applying and upholding the rule of law would “be against this.”
We “Minnesotan Taxpayers Against Genocide” numbered nine, drawn from congressional districts throughout the state and constituents of the various U.S. congressional representatives and senators who voted for the supplemental funding of Israel in April 2024, well after the International Court of Justice had adjudicated Israel to be engaged in plausible genocide.
Our backgrounds are diverse: a retired F.B.I. special agent and former Minneapolis Division legal counsel; three military veterans; a former U.S. Postal employee; a retired teacher; two with administrative/business experience; a Lutheran deacon expert on “moral injury,” the topic of her PhD thesis.
Well over 200 other Minnesota taxpayers had signed a petition in support of our lawsuit but the majority of our federal congresspersons were obviously not in support since they were the named defendants — along with both Biden’s and Trump’s Defense Secretaries Lloyd Austin and Pete Hegseth.
A notable exception is Rep. Ilhan Omar. We did not name her as a defendant since she is the only congressperson in Minnesota, in either the U.S. House or Senate, to vote against the Israel Security Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2024. Eventually, Tina Smith and Amy Klobuchar, the two U.S. senators for Minnesota, did stop voting for further armaments to Israel so, who knows, maybe our lawsuit did help change their minds. (Smith is not seeking reelection and Klobuchar is now running to become Minnesota’s next governor.)
A Judicial Marathon
U.S. District courthouse for the District of Minnesota in downtown Minneapolis. (Tony Webster /Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 2.0)
The civil suit engendered 60 filings. There were a number of reasons for this large number:
-the government shutdown in 2025 caused delay by the defense of the assistant U.S. attorneys (AUSAs) representing U.S. officials;
-our plaintiffs being subsequently allowed to amend our complaint to merely seek declaratory judgment;
-dropping our original request for certification as a class action and any monetary damages;
-and also due to the clerk of court granting us plaintiffs an “entry of default judgment” in February 2026 for the government’s “failure to respond” to the judicial deadline when 14 assistant U.S. attorneys (nearly half) in Minnesota resigned after U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen directed federal prosecutors to investigate the partner of murdered activist Rene Good, rather that the ICE agent who shot her.
Those who resigned included the chief of the Civil Division assigned to our litigation. Those departures, along with a massive increase in habeas petitions resulting from the unwarranted and punitive detention of thousands of immigrants, many of whom had legal status, left the remaining federal prosecutors unable to handle their caseload, including non-immigration suits like ours.
In this context, we had a good argument that the government’s default in our case was not merely negligent or excusable since it was a problem created by unethical, and likely illegal, actions by the Department of Justice itself.
Nonetheless, the presiding district judge in our case failed to grant us default judgment, which would have meant that the factual allegations in our amended complaint would have been deemed true by the court because of the defendants’ failure to respond.
But that didn’t happen.
Instead, the judge allowed the government to go back to the drawing board and refile a motion to dismiss on the grounds of our lack of legal standing as taxpayers to bring our complaint and the “political question doctrine” restricting court power over foreign policy decisions of the executive branch — as it had with our original complaint.
This all culminated with our final legal memorandum in support of our motion for declaratory judgment (filed fittingly enough on “Tax Day,” April 15).
Judge Belittled Our Claim of Standing
Thank you Congress/Biden, your aid was received! March for a Free Palestine, Freedom Plaza, Washington, D.C., Nov. 4, 2023. (Diane Krauthamer, Flickr, CC BY-NC)
Eric C. Tostrud, the chief district judge of Minnesota, summarily dismissed our case and refused to even issue a mere declaratory judgment acknowledging that our officials’ complicity in genocide is illegal.
His 10-page dismissal is here.
Essentially Judge Tostrud’s dismissal is based solely on “lack of standing” by taxpayer plaintiffs, for which he cited the Flast v Cohen Supreme Court precedent that created taxpayer standing. (Prior to Flast, taxpayer status was not considered sufficient, in and of itself, to confer standing to taxpayers wishing to sue the government for unlawful or unconstitutional appropriations.)
Flast v. Cohen carved out an exception for taxpayers in 1968 after the government appropriated tax dollars for use by religious schools; a now recognized violation of the Establishment Clause of the Constitution.
Unfortunately the district judge was unwilling to read Flast as applicable to arguably far more serious unconstitutionality, even as he acknowledged our claim that Congress and the executive branch were in violation of another provision of the Constitution; Article VI, which makes the Genocide Convention the supreme law of the land.
(We also charged that the funding of Israel is illegal under the “Tax and Spend Clause” of the U.S. Constitution in Article I, Section 8. When numerous international judicial and human rights authorities have found Israel to be engaged in genocide, a law funding that genocide clearly violates the “general welfare” stipulation in Article I.)
The judge belittled our claim of standing, based on our position that in addition to the actual amounts of money paid by each taxpayer, such unlawful complicity in genocide can also amount to real injury, moral injury.
He decided that we failed to
“identify any personal injury suffered by them as a consequence of the alleged constitutional error, other than the psychological consequence presumably produced by observation of conduct with which one disagrees.”
This interpretation of Flast v Cohen is unduly narrow — especially given that it’s not about the de minimus taxes paid but the moral injury that comes with bing complicit, no matter the amount of money.
Pettifoggery
Still from a U.N. film strip, circa 1949, on the 1948 Genocide Convention. (U.N. Photo)
Our request of the court was a simple one, a declaratory judgment on the lawfulness and constitutionality of the Israel Security Supplemental Appropriations Act.
Our request was, and remains, consistent with the cornerstone rulings in Marbury v. Madison:
- Federal laws that conflict with the Constitution are invalid.
- Judges have the power and the duty to determine when federal laws are unconstitutional.
To engage in pettifoggery is to give undue attention to insignificant details in order to avoid addressing a more important question. We think Judge Tostrud’s dismissal of our legal standing absolutely amounted to pettifoggery.
Genocide is a jus cogens, or compelling, norm from which no derogation, or limitation, is permissible. Yet Judge Tostrud chose to focus on standing, belittling our claims to injury in the process.
Must one self immolate in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., as active-duty airman Aaron Bushnell did to demonstrate that an injury is “concrete and particularized?”
Article I – about taxing and spending for the common good — and Article VI making the Genocide Convention the “supreme law of the land” — are just as important backbones of the Constitution as the Establishment Clause cited in Flast to challenge the use of tax dollars for use by religious schools.
There is therefore no reason that the standing granted to the taxpayers in Flast should not also allow us to challenge a specific congressional enactment that even more seriously injures us in violation of these other provisions of the U.S. Constitution.
We have a direct and personal stake (as will many others) in the judicial judgment we seek: that it is illegal to fund genocide with our public monies. We may be sounding the alarm for others in our society as we identify the blot on the skin that signals spreading cancer. (“Silence like a cancer grows” sang Simon and Garfunkel.)
We could be likened to the relative few who spoke and acted against the Nazi genocide. After the Nazi genocide became more widely condemned, the masses of people who failed to prevent it lived with decades of guilt, shame and reparations. Of course, many pretended that they “had always been against this.”
Moral Injury
Vigil on Feb. 27, 2024, outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington for Aaron Bushnell, a U.S. airman who self-immolated to protest the Israeli genocide in Gaza. (Diane Krauthamer, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
To understand the context of our legal standing, one must know that “moral injury” is a new term for something that is eons old; witnessing or being forced to participate in events that contradict deeply held moral beliefs and expectations.
While the term initially arose in connection with military service, moral injury is now identified in diverse populations, including health professionals, lawyers, public servants, teachers and journalists.
Similarly, PTSD (Post-traumatic Stress Disorder) was not so identified until after the Vietnam War.
Notably, new terms may not yet have legal precedents.
We litigants are members of the government by the people. As such, we are party legally and morally to the duty to prevent genocide. As we witness the horror of the misery our taxes are enacting daily, we suffer from moral injury. The crime of genocide is so extreme — “the crime of crimes” — that we plaintiffs suffer anguish, alienation and anger as well as actual, resulting deleterious physical effects.
These results (and much more could be added regarding how they impair our lives) were caused by the betrayal of our duly sworn elected officials — those in authority — to follow the law.
The actual impact of any traumatic event can vary greatly from person to person, just as some people suffer more from a toxic chemical exposure than others. We now know, however, that intergenerational trauma causes damage and that many people “self-medicate” their distress to the point of addiction.
In any case, just because people respond differently to a traumatic injury does not negate the culpability of the injurer. So far, none of us have committed suicide, but we do theorize that moral injury propelled Aaron Bushnell and others to take their own lives in protest of the genocide.
We have a direct and personal stake (as will many others) in the requested judicial judgment that the funding of genocide with our public monies is illegal. That many others will share this injury underscores the need to address our injury with a judicial judgment.
Normalizing genocide endangers our humanity in many ways.
A Previous Case & Dismissal
Defense for Children International-Palestine v. Biden, another case challenging the U.S. government’s complicity in genocide, was dismissed by the 9th Circuit primarily on the erroneous grounds of the “political question doctrine” of courts’ limited power over foreign-policy decisions by the executive branch.
[See: Judges Unmoved in Biden Genocide Complicity Case]
That dismissal was reached even though the initial district judge to hear the case brought in California had cried out for something to be done:
“This Court implores Defendants to examine the results of their unflagging support of the military siege against the Palestinians in Gaza.”
Prolonging Widespread Suffering
Child and others wounded in Israeli attack on Gaza, 2023. (Fars photo, Ghassan Salem, CC BY 4.0)
Criminally, even greater human, environmental, and moral suffering has continued to scream since the judge dismissed our case in July.
Would it have helped our case to produce evidence from Gaza of the stray dog with a toddler’s arm in its mouth, or the wailing father carrying his son’s body in two trash bags? Or any of thousands of pictures and descriptions of the genocide still unfolding after over 1000 days? We’ll never know as our request to introduce further evidence apparently fell on deaf ears.
We think these judges shirked their responsibility and failed to do their jobs; that they failed to determine the factual and legal merits of our case. Instead of saying what the law is they resorted to legal pettifoggery. We found this extremely disappointing. There is overwhelming evidence of the ongoing clear commission of this “crime of crimes.” Haven’t judges sworn to uphold the U.S. Constitution?
Sadly enough, such judicial failure is not new. Prior episodes of condoned lawlessness notably include the practice of slavery, the genocide of native Americans, World War II concentration camp internments of Japanese Americans, and “Jim Crow” massacres and lynchings. These obvious crimes also became widely normalized if not fully “legalized” by judges keeping their heads down during this country’s first 250 years.
The bit of good news, however, is that the condoning of these prior historical crimes eventually came to an end, proving once again that “the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice.” Even though the “arc” can be frustratingly long, rest assured that our officials’ attempts to legalize the post 9-11 torture programs, assassinations, genocide and the “supreme crime” of launching “wars of choice” — i.e. wars of aggression — will end up similarly widely condemned.
Our third branch of government needs to find the courage to stand on the side of justice, on that arc of the moral universe.
In the meantime, the enormity of the moral and legal abyss just deepens with those government officials most complicit in genocide and other war crimes, still able to claim obliviousness and to continue to personally profit. Even worse, without any current accountability, crimes like this will always tend to spread like a cancer upon the world.
Pro se plaintiffs and co-authors:
Coleen Rowley is a retired special agent and former Minneapolis Division legal counsel of the F.B.I. who taught constitutional law and law enforcement ethics to F.B.I. agents and other law enforcement, then became a whistleblower about the F.B.I.’s pre 9-11 failures and the folly of the Iraq invasion; Apple Valley, Minnesota.
William “Bill” Sorem, U.S. Air Force veteran, former sailing fleet manager, retired computer software engineer, advertising executive and video reporter, Minnetonka, Minnesota.
Fiona Roedl, administrative assistant of a 44-year-old non-profit, Minneapolis.
Amy Blumenshine, Lutheran (ELCA) deacon, founded the Coming Home Collaborative to address the suffering of military veterans and their families, wrote dissertation on Military Moral Injury, co-authored the book Welcome Them Home; Help Them Heal: Pastoral care and ministry with service members returning from war, Minneapolis Minnesota.
Mike Madden, Veteran for Peace, St. Paul, Minnesota.
Janice Ward, sociologist, bicyclist, traveler, retired from human services, Marcell, Minnesota.
David Evenhouse, retired laborer, self-educated woodsman, student of life, happy outdoorsman, and disabled Vietnam War veteran suffering from exposure to Agent Orange, Marcell, Minnesota.
Carol Walker, former business printing professional, and long-time non-profit board member, St. Paul, Minnesota.
Darlene Coffman, retired teacher, Rochester, Minnesota.
The views expressed are solely those of the authors and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
