ACORN to Cease Operations in Ohio, Won't Return Under New Name

The community organizing group ACORN, which attracted a lot of attention during the 2008 presidential elections, has agreed to give up its Ohio business liscense and not return under another name. The group has made similar settlements in other states after being sued by a libertarian center.

U.S. District Judge Herman Weber in Cincinnati signed off on the deal, which settles claims brought by the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law against ACORN's voter registration practices. Other terms of the deal are confidential and will not be revealed.

In a lawsuit, the center alleged that ACORN's voter registrationd drives amounted to organized crime because the group turned in a pattern of fradulent forms. Maurice Thompson, the attorney for the center, said that restricting ACORN's ability to support or enable other groups to "do what they do" was crucial to the deal, especially in a state like Ohio, which he characterized as "ground zero" to their voter advocacy efforts.

Thompson said:

"It carries a great deal of significance because, in the absence of that term, ACORN could simply have shut down but reopened the next day as WALNUT or CHESTNUT or whatever and done the exact same thing. So our goal was to affect permanent change."

In other states, ACORN has simply disbanded chapters and resumed their operations under a new name. The California ACORN chapter split from the national organization in January, and then formed a new non-profit called the Alliance of Californians for Community Employment (ACCE). In New York, ACORN's local offices also disbanded but resumed operations as New York Communities for Charge.

A video shot in New York that showed three ACORN employees advising a couple posing as a prostitute and her boyfriend to lie about her profession and launder her earnings. It sparked a national scandal and drove ACORN to near ruin. Disbanding and setting up under a new name allowed the group to continue its operations, without the stigma of ACORN attached to it.

ACORN spokesman Kevin Whelan said that ACORN agreed to surrender its Ohio busienss license by June 1, and that they've already stopped all their activities in the state:

"For reasons unrelated to the lawsuit, ACORN was winding up its staff operations in Ohio anyway. So there was no practical reason for us to spend time and money litigating this suit further, even though it was baseless and intended to harass us."