Separation Of Church And State

A 1971 law giving the Christian Science Church an extended copyright to its central theological text was declared unconstitutional this week by a federal appeals court. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals here said the law giving the church a copyright to all editions of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" is unconstitutional because it "offends the fundamental principles of separation of church and state."

Republican senatorial candidate Christine O’Donnell, a "tea party" movement favorite who has become a political pincushion for Democrats, found herself precariously perched on a new limb Tuesday when  she seemed unsure whether the Constitution guaranteed that church and state be kept separate. O’Donnell, who wrested the GOP nomination from Delaware’s Republican establishment, met her Democratic opponent Chris Coons in their third debate for the Senate seat once held by Vice President Joe Biden.

Each Friday, 10 Muslim students gather discreetly in the shadow of a University High School building in Irvine for prayer, at times led by a local college student who slips onto campus and quietly leaves 30 minutes later. At Irvine High School, a similar group treks to a nearby park for the practice, required in the Koran of all Muslims of a certain age. The group goes to the park because involvement by an adult in religious activity on campus is prohibited.

The Pledge of Allegiance to "one nation under God" doesn't violate a citizen's right to be free of state-mandated religion, a divided federal appeals court ruled Thursday in reversing one of its most controversial decisions. In a 2-1 ruling, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said no federal law requires students to recite the pledge or the religious reference in it. The 9th Circuit had ruled in 2002 in a case brought by Sacramento atheist Michael Newdow that the wording violated the Establishment Clause of the Constitution's 1st Amendment, which prohibits the enactment of any law or official policy in support of a religion.

The Huntington Beach City Council has accepted a "peace pole" from a local church, despite concerns that the 7-foot monument would violate the separation of church and state. The pole, offered by the Church of Religious Science, will be placed in front of City Hall. The council, which voted 6 to 1 Monday night to accept the gift, rejected a proposal to place the six-sided pole in front of the library. "I think it's more fitting at City Hall," said Councilwoman Pam Julien Houchen.

The Pledge of Allegiance to "one nation under God" doesn't violate a citizen's right to be free of state-mandated religion, a divided federal appeals court ruled Thursday in reversing one of its most controversial decisions. In a 2-1 ruling, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said no federal law requires students to recite the pledge or the religious reference in it. The 9th Circuit had ruled in 2002 in a case brought by Sacramento atheist Michael Newdow that the wording violated the Establishment Clause of the Constitution's 1st Amendment, which prohibits the enactment of any law or official policy in support of a religion.

Setting the stage for a possible Supreme Court ruling on the separation of church and state, a federal appeals court Monday declared Cleveland's school voucher program unconstitutional because it uses tax money to send students to religious schools. In a 2-1 ruling, the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals said the program appears designed to favor religious schools and thereby violates the constitutional separation of church and state.

A state appeals court Thursday overturned a lower court ruling that had voided a 2005 ballot measure in which the city-owned land beneath the controversial Mt. Soledad cross was deeded to the federal government. A trial judge had said the measure, approved by 76% of voters, was an improper attempt to sidestep a federal judge's ruling that the cross violated constitutional separation of church and state.

A federal judge ruled that a Ten Commandments monument installed in Alabama's judicial building by the state's chief justice must be removed because it violates the separation of church and state. "Its sloping top and the religious air of the tablets unequivocally call to mind an open Bible resting on a podium," U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson said. Chief Justice Roy Moore's attorney said the chief justice would appeal.

A job applicant who speaks English with a thick foreign accent may be denied employment without violating federal anti-discrimination laws, according to a ruling that the Supreme Court let stand on Monday. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbids job discrimination based on an individual's "national origin," race, sex or religion. But the U.S.

This small city's namesake military base was decommissioned after World War II, but over the years Fort Oglethorpe, population 7,000, has retained its utilitarian, base-town ambience. Public life here unfolds on two busy four-lane thoroughfares clogged with used-car lots, fast-food joints and pawnshops. All that's missing are the troops. What Fort Oglethorpe does not lack is churches -- enough churches, in an array of Protestant flavors, to deliver salvation to brigades of sinners.

A baseball fan who says he was ejected from Yankee Stadium after he left his seat to use the bathroom while "God Bless America" was playing sued the New York Yankees and the city Wednesday. Bradford Campeau-Laurion says in his federal lawsuit that his rights were violated at an Aug. 26 game between the Yankees and the Boston Red Sox when he tried to pass a police officer, who was being paid by the Yankees to work at the Bronx stadium.

A group of atheists, led by a California man known for challenging the use of the words "under God" in recitals of the Pledge of Allegiance at public schools, filed a lawsuit to bar prayer and references to God at the swearing-in of President-elect Barack Obama. Michael Newdow, 17 other people and 10 groups representing atheists sued Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., several officials in charge of inaugural festivities, the Rev. Joseph Lowery and Orange County megachurch pastor Rick Warren.

Whether the issue is a Nativity scene in a town square or the Ten Commandments at a city hall, Americans never seem to tire of debating whether public displays of religion are constitutional. Year after year, courts give their blessings to some displays and the ax to others. After more than 200 years debating the 1st Amendment, why haven't we found consensus?

Bill Ritter Jr. was not the first governor of Colorado to declare the first Thursday in May as a day of prayer. But he was the first to attend a celebration of the National Day of Prayer at the state Capitol, joining a crowd of several hundred Christians in 2007. His appearance at the event caught the attention of a Wisconsin-based atheist group, which has mounted a campaign its leaders hope will dissuade him and other governors from participating again.

A long-running dispute over a cross in the Mojave National Preserve in Southern California may give the Supreme Court a chance to shift the law on church-state separation. Bush administration lawyers urged the justices last week to take up the case and to reverse a series of rulings that would "require the government to tear down a cross that has stood without incident for 70 years as a memorial to fallen service members." The appeal may be well timed.

The enormous windows of the Texas law library, an otherwise musty and lonely place, capture Austin's gentility frame by frame -- a towering oak tree, a garden of yellow roses, the granite rotunda of the state Capitol. Inside, a homeless man with tired eyes works at a corner carrel in the basement amid his belongings -- a duffel bag with a broken zipper, reading glasses he found in a parking lot, chicken-scratch notes sullied with splashes of instant coffee.

Court-appointed PTL trustee David Clark filed a new bankruptcy reorganization plan, one that would sell off nearly all assets and make him the head of the bankrupt television ministry. Disgraced founder Jim Bakker expressed immediate outrage, saying the proposal is a power grab and violates the constitutional principle of separation of church and state.

A watchdog group that advocates the separation of church and state has filed complaints with the Internal Revenue Service against seven churches, including one in Orange County, where pastors on Sunday endorsed presidential candidates or delivered political sermons -- defying a federal ban on campaigning by nonprofit groups.

The socially conservative Alliance Defense Fund is recruiting several dozen pastors to endorse political candidates from their pulpits Sept. 28, in defiance of Internal Revenue Service rules. The effort by the Arizona-based legal consortium is designed to trigger an IRS investigation that ADF lawyers would challenge in federal court. The goal is to persuade the Supreme Court to throw out a 54-year-old ban on such endorsements by tax-exempt houses of worship. An opposing group of Christian and Jewish clergy will petition the IRS today to stop the protest, calling the ADF's "Pulpit Initiative" an assault on the rule of law and the separation of church and state.