U.S. Supreme Court won’t hear challenge of Kentucky law crediting ‘Almighty God

U.S. Supreme Court won’t hear challenge of Kentucky law crediting ‘Almighty God

The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear a challenge to Kentucky laws giving official credit to Almighty God for its security.

The high court, without comment, on Monday rejected the petition by a group of Kentucky citizens, represented by the organization American Atheists, who argued that the laws breached the constitutional prohibition against state-sponsored religion.

At issue is legislation passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. A 2002 “legislative finding” said the “safety and security of the commonwealth cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon Almighty God.”

And a 2006 act creating the state’s Office of Homeland Security required its executive director to publicize “dependence on Almighty God,” which it has been doing in annual reports and other printed materials and through a posting at the entrance to its emergency operations center.

After plaintiffs sued in 2008, Franklin Circuit Judge Thomas Wingate upheld their claims, ruling that the state had “created an official government position on God.”

But the Court of Appeals in 2011 voted 2-1 to reverse that decision, saying the law “merely pays lip service to a commonly held belief in the puissance (power) of God.” The Kentucky Supreme Court declined to review it.

Now with the U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the case, the ruling by the Court of Appeals remains the final word.

“Naturally I’m very thankful, because it lets stand the idea subscribed to by the signers of the Declaration of Independence as well as Kentucky legislators that there are certain self-evident truths (including) the reliance on the protection of divine providence,” said Rep. Tom Riner, D-Louisville.

The plaintiffs’ attorney, Edwin Kagin of Union, Ky., said he was disappointed but stressed that the U.S. Supreme Court justices did not set any precedent.

Kagin said he would consider a new round of litigation beginning at the federal district court level if any plaintiffs wanted to challenge the law on federal rather than state religious-liberty laws.

“They’ve given us the opportunity to open up the whole thing through the federal system,” said Kagin, national legal director for American Atheists. “The way things stand now it is the law in Kentucky. If anyone wants to know why it shouldn’t be law in Kentucky, they should read Judge Shake’s opinion.”

The lone dissenter in the Kentucky Court of Appeals case, Ann O’Malley Shake, said the law “was enacted for a predominantly religious purpose and conveyed a message of mandatory religious belief.”

Attorney General Jack Conway said in a statement Monday: “I appreciate the court’s consideration of this matter and by declining to hear the case, it affirms the constitutionality of Kentucky’s statute.”

His office argued that the laws had a secular legislative purpose, doesn’t advance religion and are in keeping with historic precedent, with “public invocations for the protection of a generic God.”

When the case came before the Court of Appeals, virtually every state legislator in both houses as well as Conway weighed in with briefs in favor of the law.

Thirty-five of the state’s senators were represented by Roy Moore, the Alabama chief justice who was removed from office in 2003 for defying a federal court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from his state’s judicial building. Moore has since been re-elected to the post.

COURIER JOURNAL

Categories: Faith

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