Christians Win Free Speech Victory Against ACLU In New York
Posted on April 10, 2006
Via Montana News
A federal judge has ordered an upstate New York school district to return bricks inscribed with Christian messages to a high school walkway, and a pro-family civil liberties attorney is praising the outcome as a victory against viewpoint discrimination.
The dispute arose after the Mexico Academy High School class of 1999 in Mexico, New York (Oswego County), sold bricks that could be inscribed with personal messages and included in a walkway as a fundraiser. However, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) complained that certain bricks, particularly those inscribed with the messages “Jesus Saves/John 3:16″ and “Jesus Christ, the only way,” constituted public school endorsement of Christianity.
The ACLU maintained that the bricks violated the so-called “separation of church and state,” and the group’s complaints prompted school officials to remove the contested bricks in 2000. Other bricks purchased by private individuals bore messages that referred to God or to local churches but were allowed to remain in place; only the bricks mentioning Jesus were taken out of the walkway.
Leave it to the ACLU to complain that upholding the first amendment actually violates it. How much more twisted can logic be and still be called logical. Seriously, according to ACLU logic the first amendment violates the first amendment!! The school encouraged people to express themselves individually, and because they did not act to censor Christian expressions, the ACLU concludes they have endorsed it. And then through legal threats the school caved in and censored them! Insanity!
Two community residents who had purchased the extracted bricks filed a lawsuit challenging the school district’s censorship of their messages. In that case, Judge Norman Mordue of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York has now ruled that removal of the bricks bearing the Christian messages was a violation of the free-speech rights of those individuals who paid for them.
Although the District Court initially refused to grant a preliminary injunction to have the bricks reinstalled, it was forced to reconsider the issue when the Second Circuit Court of Appeals remanded the case for reconsideration. The court’s ultimate ruling orders school officials to restore the bricks inscribed with religious messages to the school walkway.
Pro-family attorney John Whitehead is president of The Rutherford Institute, the civil liberties and human rights defense organization that represented the Christian plaintiffs in the lawsuit, arguing that the school’s censorship violated rights guaranteed to citizens by the First and Fourteenth Amendments as well as by the New York Constitution. He is pleased with the court’s ruling and says it is consistent with the outcomes of many similar suits in which his legal group has been involved.
“We’ve won several of these cases in this area,” Whitehead notes. ” It’s called viewpoint discrimination. You can’t discriminate against the religious viewpoint, and the judge said that’s what happened here. It violates the First Amendment.”
The attorney asserts that officials with the high school, in initiating the walkway fundraiser, created a public forum that allowed for private speech, and apparently the bricks with the Christian messages were initially welcomed. “But when the ACLU threatened a lawsuit,” he says, “they actually removed the bricks, and the judge said that’s viewpoint discrimination. That violates the First Amendment when you have different messages on a sidewalk or in [another public] forum.”
That’s the ACLU for you in all its shining glory; America’s number one religious censor! It is quite shameful that an organization that prides itself as the protector of religious liberty to use legally threaten people to actually violate people’s rights. But that is what the ACLU are best at.
Alan Sears describes the ACLU well in this WND column.
This dramatic erosion of religious liberty is the result of the ACLU’s deliberate, incremental strategy. The group often starts its attacks against cash-strapped organizations or legally unsophisticated governmental agencies. Many times, a forceful letter from a big-firm ACLU lawyer is enough to cause an administrator to restrict the public expression of religion.
Even if the embattled organization is sympathetic to a believer’s plight, officials often determine it isn’t worth the hassle or considerable expense to fight the ACLU in a protracted battle. When people do stand their constitutionally protected ground, the ACLU often finds judges and courts likely to support their leftist legal interpretations. And every successful case serves as a precedent for the next.
The ACLU’s destructive assault on the religious heritage of this nation must be challenged – and vigorously. We as a people must stand our ground to protect our constitutionally guaranteed right to freely practice our religion in public and private.
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5 Responses to “Christians Win Free Speech Victory Against ACLU In New York”
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Jay…this school district is the district next to mine and I’ve worked in Mexico, NY for several years in the past…I’ve been aware of the controversy since its inception. Mexico is located in Oswego County…a rural…mostly agricultural area of upstate NY…good folks. I’ve know Judge Mordue for several years…glad to see he reached a decision which favored the Free Speech of all the rest of us….Cookie…Oh..and BTW…its the only place in the United States where Mexico is north of Texas (Texas, New York)…check it out….
Jay…a very close friend of mine is a retired teacher from the Mexico, NY school we are talking about. He has just informed me that he has been informed by an active teacher that the Board of Education (School Board) is NOT going to re-install the bricks in question…..Cookie
Interesting…please keep me informed and updated.
Will Do….right now I’ve got a query into the The Palladium Times…(their local paper)..to see if they can ascertain anything new….
The ACLU is always “whining” about the separation of Church and State. Many election polling places across this country are schools. Many schools “rent” themselves out to churches on Sundays who have no building of their own. Many high schools allow after hours “Bible Groups” for teens, which is laudable. Even if I were not a Born Again Christian (BAC), I would rather see America’s teens reading and discussing the Bible than doing Heaven knows what else!
Concerning this case about the “message bricks”, apparently, it was OK to have GOD on the bricks, but not the name JESUS. I can fully understand how people can believe in God, but not Jesus. To believe in God and not Jesus is just a self-proclamation that demands no self-accountability.
A person can say, “OK, I have NO idea how this universe and Earth came to be, so there must be a higher power, a God”. But to admit that Jesus exists and was sent to Earth to save us all for eternity….now that’s a whole new ball of wax, right? Now, I do not intend to get up on a religious soapbox here. What really gets me is how one person (i.e. Michael Newdow) can get up and say how mentioning God or Jesus in a classroom has horribly destroyed his child’s (and his) life! Aren’t we just talking about words here? If a person’s life were “destroyed”, I would expect to hear the words Rape, Murder, Arson, etc. Sir, I fully respect YOUR opinion. That’s what makes the USA great! (By the way, “Mike”, have you honestly ever read the Bible cover to cover before you made your stance?) But..what about the opinions of the rest of us? Is your right NOT to believe in God and Jesus better than my right to believe? I don’t recall, when this Newdow incident first occured, MULTITUDES of supporters coming to his aid. Yet one man (with the “help” of the ACLU) could do so much damage to our First Amendment. Of course, finding that “certain” Judge, who feels the same way, didn’t help…and that in itself is a disgrace to our country and its judicial system. In the end Mr. Newdow (and others like you), when we leave this earth, where will we end up? I know where I will be (100% sure!), but are you 100% sure where you will be? I DO hope that I will see your smiling faces in the “end”! I would hate to “hear” you say, “Well, I drew my line in the sand and I was stubborn to the end and I got my point across, but what a HORRIBLE price I’ve had to pay to do it!