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The top public donors to the Pacific Legal fund which championed the case are the Dunn Family Foundation for The Advancement of Right Thinking and the Sarah Scaife Foundation. The Dunn's run a capital management firm and Sarah Scaife is the niece of Andrew Mellon. I don't think they're personally billionaires but they probably have net worths in the hundred millions and manage family foundations.
I can't imagine that that is what OP meant by having a billionaire fund your lawsuit. Not to mention that those two donors together have donated, over 20 years, 5 million. Not much for a an organization with current annual operating revenues of $26 million.
Yeah OP is wrong that this is the pet projector a single billionaire, it's a legal non profit funded by an array of ideologically motivated foundations and wealthy individuals. Whether this is the healthy functioning of civil society or a conspiracy of dark money depends on whether you like the outcome.
We don't actually know who funds the PLF, but the donations they do disclose are mostly from wealthy libertarian family foundations. They don't try to make themselves seem grassroots by touting the number of donors or average donation size. Maybe it's a bunch of blue collar types fired up about taking property rights cases to the supreme court and donating $27 each but if their private donors are anything like their public donors then they're a bunch of extremely wealthy libertarians.
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