News bits: 5th Circuit vindicates free speech; Christianity’s fight for tax revenues

The federal 5th circuit appeals court (TX, LA, AL) is often said by experts to be the most radical right of all the federal circuits. A recent decision indicates that it has not yet crossed a line where non-religious speech in public places can be suppressed while religious speech is allowed. I suspect that day is coming, but it's not here yet. This will be one of the trickiest things for Christian nationalism to pull off, but it is a cherished goal. 

The FFRF writes:

The Freedom From Religion Foundation today won its case before an appeals court against the Texas governor’s censorship of its Capitol display.

After Gov. Greg Abbott and the State Preservation Board blatantly and illegally censored FFRF’s display in the Texas Capitol in 2015, Abbott and the board have fought every step of the way to delay the ultimate resolution of FFRF’s now six-and-a-half-year lawsuit, engaging in protracted, entirely avoidable litigation at taxpayer expense.

FFRF, with help from members and with requisite permit and sponsorship by a legislator, had placed a Winter Solstice display in the Capitol building in December 2015 to counter a Christian nativity there. FFRF’s whimsical exhibit depicts the Founders and the Statue of Liberty celebrating the “birth” of the Bill of Rights (adopted on Dec. 15, 1791). Abbott, as chair of the Preservation Board, while permitting the Christian exhibit, ordered FFRF’s display removed only three days after it was erected, lambasting it as indecent, mocking and contributing to public immorality. FFRF initially won its lawsuit at the district court level in 2018.

Instead of allowing secular speech, Abbott closed the Texas capitol to all private speech. This tends to be the outcome when secularists move to match Christian displays on government property with secular displays. Instead of allowing hated secularism speech in public, the radical right usually shuts down all speech. This legal tactic has also successfully been employed by The Satanic Temple.

If the day ever comes when federal courts hold that religious speech is acceptable but secular speech is not, that will mark a major blow to secularism and democracy. This is a drawing of what Abbott called indecent, mocking and contributing to public immorality. 

Not indecent, mocking or 

contributing to public immorality

The state of Texas, or preferably Abbott personally, should be forced to pay for all of FFRF's legal fees plus ~10-fold higher punitive damages for blatantly illegal and frivolous litigation. FFRF is currently petitioning the court for attorney’s fees given the outrageousness of the lawsuit.

The FFRF states that its purpose is to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church.

____________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________

A core goal of Christian nationalism (CN) is to gain access to more and more tax dollars over time. The effort has been ongoing in the courts for years. This goal ranks high along with killing abortion rights, discriminating against the LGBQT community and completely eliminating secular public education and replacing it with fundamentalist Christian education. The FFRF writes about a major CN advance in access to tax dollars and their use to replace secular public schools:

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is appalled at Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signing legislation that will funnel over $340 million in taxpayer dollars to private, mostly religious schools.

The new law is an egregious decimation of the public school system in the name of “school choice.” The “Students First Act” creates an education savings account redirecting taxpayer funds to private school education. The newly enacted law makes these funds available to families who make 300 percent of the poverty income guidelines for the first year. The following year, the availability of the funds will be expanded to families making 400 percent of the poverty income guidelines. After that, the funds will be available to all families, regardless of income. Eventually, all Iowa families can use up to $7,598 a year for private school tuition.

In short, even if a family is fully financially capable of sending their children to private schools, and even if they have always planned to utilize private schools, they will soon be eligible to receive taxpayer-funded assistance for that purpose.

In addition to being bad policy, the law runs counter to the Iowa Constitution. Article 1, Section 3 of the Iowa Constitution states, “... nor shall any person be compelled to … pay tithes, taxes, or other rates for building or repairing places of worship, or the maintenance of any minister, or ministry.”

FFRF has long held that where public tax dollars go, public accountability must follow. But there will be little public accountability for funds going to these religiously segregated and unaccountable parochial schools.

“Forcing taxpayers to pay for the religious education of others is a fundamental violation of religious liberty,” comments FFRF Co-President Dan Barker. “Public education funds should be utilized solely for secular, public education.”

The Supreme Court has continued to erode church-state separation by allowing taxpayers to support religious schools, calling religious education free speech and religious activity such as prayer protected by the free exercise clause. By employing legal tactics to subvert the establishment clause, the radical right CN movement has significantly weakened the vitality of church-state separation. The establishment clause used to have power to keep the church away from tax revenues, but it is fading into legal irrelevance in view of radical CN Supreme Court decisions in recent years.[1]

Over time, it the US Supreme Court will narrow the scope of the establishment clause to the point of it being almost completely irrelevant. That outcome is a highly cherished, long-time CN goal.

Footnote: 

1. A 2022 Supreme Court case severely limited the vitality of the establishment clause. One source writes:

The United States Supreme Court issued a 6-3 decision on June 27, 2022, that significantly affects the analysis courts use to determine whether the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment has been violated. The Establishment Clause provides that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” and it has long been interpreted to apply to state and local governments.

The case, Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, arose in Washington State. Joseph Kennedy (Kennedy), a public high school football coach, took a knee on the 50-yard line after games and prayed.

The Court then addressed the role of the Establishment Clause, and in so doing, overruled the 1971 U.S. Supreme Court case of Lemon v. Kurtzman. The Lemon Court Establishment Clause analysis calls for an evaluation of the purposes and effects of an action and whether it fosters “excessive government entanglement with religion.” The Court asserted that the Lemon test for Establishment Clause violations caused chaos in lower courts and led to differing results in materially similar cases. Also, in the Court’s view, the Establishment Clause test in Lemon overemphasizes the importance of the Establishment Clause in relation to the Free Speech and Free Exercise clauses.