NoGodBlog.com

Jesus comes down with a cost -- it must have been one of those "mysterious ways" things.

A federal judge has awarded the American Civil Liberties Union more than $42,000 to cover attorneys fees and court costs associated with the organization's fight to remove a portrait of Jesus from Slidell City Court.

U.S. District Court Judge Ivan L.R. Lemelle ruled ruled in April that Slidell officials broke the law by hanging the Jesus portrait on the wall at the courthouse.
The decision provided the ACLU with $1 in damages and allowed the organization to request reimbursement for the debt the ACLU incurred when it sued the court, Judge Jim Lamz, the city of Slidell and St. Tammany Parish in July 2007.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected a First Amendment challenge to a Florida law that says students must get a parent's permission to get out of a daily classroom recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.

But the court ruled that a part of the law requiring all "civilians" to stand during the pledge in schools is unconstitutional.

Christine Frazier had brought suit on behalf of her son, Cameron, in 2005, when her son was in the 11th grade. A federal district judge agreed that the rule "robs the student of the right to make an independent decision whether to say the pledge."

On appeal, 11th Circuit Chief Judge J.L. Edmondson, Senior Judge James C. Hill and visiting 9th Circuit Senior Judge Arthur L. Alarcón noted that the U.S. Supreme Court held over a half a century ago that local government authorities can't compel a salute to the flag.

But the panel said the Florida law protects parents' constitutional rights to bring up their children as they see fit. "The State, in restricting the student's freedom of speech, advances the protection of the constitutional rights of parents: an interest which the State may lawfully protect," the panel said Wednesday.

The panel warned that it considered only Frazier's challenge to the law on its face and not whether it might be applied constitutionally to any particular student.

On the question of standing during the pledge, the state acknowledged that students have a right to remain seated but had urged the court to read the requirement as applicable only to those students who don't get a parent's permission to not say the pledge. The 11th Circuit panel said that interpretation was too "improbable."

I don't quite get the latter, I guess it means the kids have to pledge allegiance unless they get parents permission to stop, but they can sit down in protest while they do it. I guess parents have rights over what a child says, but not his posture while he says it.