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Court says Jesus statue can stay
Posted By Cheryl Chumley On 09/01/2015 @ 7:31 am In Diversions,Faith,Front Page,U.S. | No Comments
The Jesus statue can stay, a panel ruled.
Two of three 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ judges slapped back at atheists who wanted to remove a Jesus statue from U.S. Forest Service land, telling them in a just-released ruling: Sorry, you’re not winning this one.
The panel in effect agreed with U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen of Montana, who had previously ruled the Jesus statue, which stands six feet tall on a northwestern, Montana ski hill – and has for 60 or so years – is just as secular, if not more so, as religious, Fox News reported.
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She wrote, in her 2013 ruling: “Big Mountain Jesus has been the subject of much frivolity over the years,” as people have used its site as a gathering place before skiing, as a wedding spot and as other secular-type uses. In addition, she said, the statue has been adorned over the years with a host of secular objects, from Mardi Gras beads to ski hats and goggles.
And that’s how the 9th Circuit interpreted it, too, when atheists and members of the Freedom From Religious Foundation appealed the 2013 ruling.
“The Court rightly rejected Freedom From Religion Foundation’s radical idea that a privately owned memorial standing in the middle of a ski resort violates the Constitution,” said Eric Baxter, an attorney with the Becket Fund, which defended the Flathead National Forest, forest supervisor Chip Weber and the U.S. Forest Service during the appeal.
The lone dissenting voice on the panel, Judge Harry Pregerson, however, said the statue of Jesus “situated on a government-leased land cannot realistically be looked upon as being ‘predominantly secular in nature.”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is planning to petition for a hearing before the full court.
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