Post by Paddy by Grace on Nov 30, 2009 9:01:47 GMT -7
www.onenewsnow.com/Legal/Default.aspx?id=784076
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is asking a lower court to rethink its earlier decision over church signs in an Arizona town.
Alliance Defense Fund attorney David Cortman tells OneNewsNow that the decision involves Good News Community Church in Gilbert, Arizona, in a case that has been ongoing for several years.
"In this particular case, Gilbert allows signs to be up for extraordinary lengths of time, including political signs, up for years at a time," the attorney explains. "Yet if a church puts up a sign for its Sunday service, it's only allowed up the night before the service," he adds, noting that it must be taken down immediately after the service is over.
Cortman contends the 12-hour window is not a reasonable amount of time allotted for churches to exhibit their free-speech rights, especially "since it's dark before they're allowed to put up their signs in the first place."
The town agreed in 2007 to an injunction prohibiting it from enforcing the sign code against the church. The disallowed code required church signs to be smaller in size, fewer in number, and displayed for a shorter amount of time than signs of non-religious nature. Despite that, an amended code that followed the injunction still discriminated against the church.
The Ninth Circuit sent the case back to a federal court to determine if the city's ordinance violates the constitutional rights of the city's churches. It ruled that the district court "did not address Good News' claim that the ordinance unfairly discriminates among forms of noncommercial speech."
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is asking a lower court to rethink its earlier decision over church signs in an Arizona town.
Alliance Defense Fund attorney David Cortman tells OneNewsNow that the decision involves Good News Community Church in Gilbert, Arizona, in a case that has been ongoing for several years.
"In this particular case, Gilbert allows signs to be up for extraordinary lengths of time, including political signs, up for years at a time," the attorney explains. "Yet if a church puts up a sign for its Sunday service, it's only allowed up the night before the service," he adds, noting that it must be taken down immediately after the service is over.
Cortman contends the 12-hour window is not a reasonable amount of time allotted for churches to exhibit their free-speech rights, especially "since it's dark before they're allowed to put up their signs in the first place."
The town agreed in 2007 to an injunction prohibiting it from enforcing the sign code against the church. The disallowed code required church signs to be smaller in size, fewer in number, and displayed for a shorter amount of time than signs of non-religious nature. Despite that, an amended code that followed the injunction still discriminated against the church.
The Ninth Circuit sent the case back to a federal court to determine if the city's ordinance violates the constitutional rights of the city's churches. It ruled that the district court "did not address Good News' claim that the ordinance unfairly discriminates among forms of noncommercial speech."