Legal News

In Lawsuits We Trust

By Ashby Jones

While on vacation last week, we had the occasion to attend a Little League all-star game in Long Beach, Calif. (Law Blog Little League trivia: Long Beach Little League is the only team to win back-to-back Little League World Series championships, a feat the team accomplished in 1992-1993).

We bring this up because prior to the game, we were asked by the game’s announcer to join her in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Given the vast amount of Establishment Clause litigation that’s been filed throughout the years over the saying of the Pledge, the placement of the Ten Commandments, the use of “In God We Trust” on our nation’s coinage, and the like, we were a bit surprised to see the ritual perpetuated in so public a forum. While others were presumably focused on the words of the Pledge or the upcoming game itself, our mind for a moment spun with lawsuit hypotheticals.

In any event, opening this morning’s LA Times, we were greeted with news of yet another Establishment Clause challenge, this one over congressional efforts to etch the words “In God We Trust” into a $621-million visitors center which opened last year at the U.S. Capitol.

According to the story, when the center opened, a number of lawmakers were surprised not to see the four words on the walls of the complex. So Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA), introduced legislation to get the words, along with the Pledge of Allegiance, etched into the complex’s walls.

A lawsuit — natch — followed. The Freedom From Religion Foundation, a Wisconsin-based group that describes itself as a national organization of atheists and agnostics, asserts that such an action would violate the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.

Rep. J. Randy Forbes (R-Va.), founder of the Congressional Prayer Caucus, condemned the lawsuit as an effort to “silence our nation’s history.”

“I’m never surprised anymore by any lawsuit,” said Lungren, a former California attorney general. “I will say that I was surprised that they would suggest that the national motto or the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional. . . . I think the historical significance is well established.”

Only a handful of lawmakers opposed the measure. One was Rep. Michael Honda (D-CA), who said: “To preference, on federal property, the words of one religion over another subtly serves to undermine our great nation’s religious freedom and diversity and contravene our Constitution’s principle of separation of church and state.”

In any event, the addition of the words to the visitors center could cost as much as $100,000.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on July 22, 2009 (boomark / email).