"Free exercise of religion" upheld:
""THE REV" and "PSALM48" can join "ARMYMOM" and "DARE2BU" on the license plates of cars in Vermont after a federal appeals court ruled Friday that the First Amendment leaves room for religion on vanity plates.
The three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Court of Appeals in New York reversed a lower-court ruling in the state's favor in a case brought by Shawn Byrne of West Rutland, Vt., whose proposed vanity plate reference to a Bible passage had been rejected by the state in 2004.
Byrne appealed a September 2007 decision by a federal judge in Burlington, Vt., that rejected his 2005 claim that the state discriminated against him when it rejected his application for a license plate that would read: "JN36TN," a reference to the often-quoted Bible verse John 3:16.
"The state rejected Byrne's message only because it addressed ... areas of otherwise permissible expression from a religious perspective," the appeals court wrote. "This the state cannot do."
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3 comments:
Good, a judge that actually follows the constitution
Exactly. There is no way that they can apply the 14th Amendment to the states under the religion clause. "Congresss shall make no law regarding the establishment of religion or the free exercise thereof" to be any thing other than the federal congress to which it refers. After all, 9 of the original 13 colonies had state churches, when those same states ratified the constitution and even nearly 75 years later. Even T. Jefferson attended the largest church in the nation, IN THE CAPTOL BUILDING. He even stated that you could throw out all of the math, english books, etc...., but the two books that were essential to a good education, were the Bible and Watts hymnal. Watts hymnal was not just a song book of hymns, but was a comprhensive course of study of the Bible.
It's rare decisions like this that give us hope that our country is not completely dead yet.
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