To be or not to be AOH

By Ray O’Hanlon

The New York St. Patrick’s Day parade and the Ancient Order of Hibernians began parting ways nine years ago.

In 1992, AOH parade organizers were battling on several fronts. They were fending off the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization, New York City and even a newly sprung parade committee that seemed intent on allowing ILGO to march in the parade.

Legal bills were mounting and it was against this backdrop that AOH leaders decided on a way out. A separate corporation would be set up to run the parade. It would act as a legal and financial buffer between hostile litigants and the AOH, an organization that exists in order to spend much of its money on charitable causes.

With this in mind, the Hibernians passed a constitutional amendment at their convention in 1992 that precluded the Order from sponsoring any parade or public celebration without first setting up a separate, non-Hibernian corporation.

Jim Barker, executive secretary of the New York parade committee, pointed to this in his statement last week as he made the point that the organization of the parade had no connection to the AOH since that time.

But when the matter of who would get the disputed parade permit surfaced in Judge Kevin Duffy’s federal court in February 1993, it was the name of the New York County Board of the Ancient Order of Hibernians that appeared on all documents submitted to the court and ultimately issued by it.

And it was clear that when the case concluded, Duffy believed he was granting the permit to the AOH, and not some separate corporation unconnected with the Order.

Duffy, in his ruling, expressly barred the New York City Human Rights Commission from interfering "with the conduct of the AOH’s 1993 New York St. Patrick’s Day Parade."

But based on last week’s parade committee statement, the ’93 would appear not to have been a Hibernian parade at all, but one run by the new, non-Hibernian, corporation. So was Judge Duffy somehow deceived?

By way of explanation, Jim Barker said that the 1993 case had been initiated in ’92 and it was his view that New York City was opposed initially by a combination of the parade committee, the AOH County Board and the AOH State Board.

When legal bills began to mount, he said, the national and state boards divested themselves from the parade. The County Board, however, was still involved in the contest as was the Parade and Celebration Committee, which had already, it seems, become a division of the new corporation not connected to the AOH-based New York County Board.

Both, however, were ultimately faced with separate legal bills. The parade committee had paid its bill, Barker said.

He was not so sure that the AOH County Board, whose name had appeared on court documents, had paid its bills.

The question, however, still hangs in the air. At what exact moment in time did the Parade and Celebration Committee cease to be formally and legally linked to the New York County Board?

And if this sundering occurred before Judge Duffy’s Feb. 26, 1993 court order in favor of the AOH, does the separate non-Hibernian corporation retain to this day a legally binding hold on the document that is so vital to the existence of the parade every St. Patrick’s Day?