FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 12, 2011
CONTACT: Matthew Benson
PHOENIX – Governor Jan Brewer today lauded the U.S. District Court’s decision to throw out a lawsuit brought against her for commemorating an Arizona Day of Prayer.
The suit was lodged in March 2010 by the Freedom from Religion Foundation. The out-of-state group challenged the constitutionality of the Governor’s Arizona Day of Prayer proclamations in 2009 and 2010, as well as a separate Day of Prayer proclamation issued for the state budget on January 17, 2010.
The U.S. District Court today granted Governor Brewer’s motion for dismissal on the grounds that the Freedom from Religion Foundation failed to demonstrate injury and, therefore, lacked standing to sue.
Statement by Governor Brewer:
“I commend the U.S. District Court for dismissing this baseless lawsuit for what it is – a futile attempt to stifle an American right and tradition. This was not the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s first failed attempt to put an end to recognized days of voluntary prayer, and it may not be its last. But citizens of every race, background and creed have been coming together in voluntary prayer since our nation’s founding, and will continue to do so against this organization’s best efforts. I thank the Court for allowing Arizona to continue commemorating this important right and custom.”
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Looks like we will have to re-submit it to State court……
How come the “Freedom from Religion Foundation” don’t put all the time and money and expert effort into a humanitarian useful cause that helps everyone, atheist and religious, like a “Freedom from Malaria Foundation?”
This is like a narcissist ego-trip for the hypersensitive.
Hmmmmm, I guess you missed the name of our group. It’s called “Freedom From Religion Foundation”. If you are looking for a group that deals with other causes like “Malaria” might I suggest you start by looking for those groups? This is like asking why doesn’t the American Cancer Society or the Heart Association deal with other things besides their causes…well it should be obvious.
We deal with the causes that the Foundation was started for in the first place…duh..
Yes, but one function has no good purpose except posture, exaggerate an imagined hardship and demand limited resources money be wasted on what amounts to no more than a personal dislike, while the other actually does something useful.
The priorities of life are very strange and very selfish.
So quick to invoke duh, but people who are egotistical do that all the time, demanding money be used to stroke one’s ego, while doing nothing to actually help others in real need and real hardship.
Were these guys to rename themselves the Freedom from Ostentatious elf-Serving Piety, I’d probably support them.
Then again, I’ve not really been injured too badly by her spirituality, and besides it’s hard to prove nausea after the fact.
You know something’s wrong when your typos are more interesting than the point you’re trying it make. Should read “Self-Serving Piety.”
God bless.
There is a disturbing trend developing in First Amendment jurisprudence; especially in the area of church and state separation. Notwithstanding the fact that many state sponsored or endorsed religious actions appear to clearly violate the well established parameters of the First Amendment, courts are now routinely dismissing lawsuits for lack of standing. To be clear, these dismissals do not involve a rejection of the constitutional challenge on the merits of the claim. To the contrary, they are simply evasions of the issue altogether. They are technical dismissals resulting in the untenable position that these First Amendment violations are simply unchallengeable by any person. Rather than hear these challenges on the merits and reach the inescapable conclusion that such actions are indeed unconstitutional, many courts have agreed to side step the issue by construing the doctrine of standing so such unconstitutional acts remain safe from constitutional challenge. Courts should be bold enough to hear and decide these challenges on constitutional grounds. Constitutional protections are meaningless if courts construe the law such that no person can invoke those protections.
In an effort to attempt to have these matters heard on the merits and to validate the notion that constitutional violations can be challenged, our clients have decided to appeal the district court’s dismissal of the Day of Prayer lawsuit. We expect to file an appeal to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeal very soon. Additionally, another lawsuit will be filed in the state court alleging violations of the state constitution.
This lawsuit is about the role of government. Our clients remain committed to the notion that prayer is either a private matter or one that can be openly and loudly promoted by any private individual or private company on any private property for any length of time. Any effort by government to inhibit any private person’s right to pray on any non-governmental property would be opposed by all plaintiffs to this lawsuit. However, our clients, those religious and non-religious, remain equally committed to the well established notion that government should neither promote, inhibit nor endorse any religious view. Simply put, government should stay out of religious matters altogether; our constitution forbids it and it is both consistent and indispensible to notions of a free and open society.