Paxton queried on police car motto
Government vehicle is no place for ‘In God we trust’ decal, group says.
Two Republican legislators asked Monday for Attorney General Ken Paxton’s opinion on the legality of displaying the motto “In God we trust” on police patrol cars after questions were raised about the Childress Police Department doing so.
Paxton, who has already expressed enthusiastic support for the policy, has 180 days to issue his nonbinding opinion.
The kerfuffle began this summer when the Freedom From Religion Foundation sent letters to more than 30 police departments in several states objec ting to placing the motto on police vehicles. The taxpayer-funded decals improperly mix religion and government by endorsing a particular religious viewpoint, the Wisconsin-based group
told Childress and the other departments.
Childress Police Chief Adrian Garcia declined to scrape off the decals, telling the foundation to “go fly a kite” in a letter posted on the department’s Facebook page late last month.
On Monday, state Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, and Rep. Drew Springer, R-Muenster, asked Paxton to determine whether police agencies could display the motto on vehicles. Both of their districts include the Panhandle city of Childress, about 120 miles southeast of Amarillo.
“At a time when law enforcement is facing assaults across the country, our police should not be burdened with worrying about frivolous law- suits over issues that have already been settled,” Perry and Springer wrote, noting that a federal appeals court last year rejected a challenge by the same organization, which objected to placing “In God we trust” on the nation’s currency.
In addition, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 1970 that placing the national motto on currency “has nothing whatsoever to do” with government sponsorship of religion, they wrote.
The request is expected to find a receptive audience in Paxton, who has made religious liberty a priority since taking office in January and has already proclaimed his support for the Childress policy.
The motto, Paxton posted on Facebook, “represents a historical premise on which our great nation was founded. It is imperative we safeguard the constitutional principles for which our Founding Fathers fought.”
“I support Chief Adrian Garcia’s decision to display our national motto on the Childress Police Department patrol vehicles,” he wrote.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation, however, has said the U.S. Supreme Court has never ruled on the constitutionality of the issue.
Until the question is decided by the nation’s highest court, police agencies should focus on their secular duties, not on messages that exclude people who are not religious, said Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the foundation.
“In a time when citizens nationwide are increasingly distrustful of police actions, it is frightening and politically dubi- ous to announce to citizens that law enforcement officers rely on the judgment of a deity rather than on the judgment of the law,” Gaylor said in a statement.
Liberty Institute, a Christian legal advocacy center based in Plano, has agreed to represent Garcia, who added the phrase to patrol cars as a patriotic gesture and to stand in solidarity with other police departments that had lost officers in recent shootings, lawyer Mike Barry said.
“This has been on coins since 1864, and (‘In God we trust’) was adopted the official national motto in 1956,” Barry said. “We certainly believe it’s appropriate for police cars to display our national motto.”