Lehigh County seal decision a victory for common sense
The Lehigh County seal can remain as is, with its cross. And we can only hope that seals the fate of cockamamie attempts to stir up controversies about government being influenced by religion.
There wasn’t any controversy about the presence of the cross in the 75-yearold county seal until the Freedom From Religion Foundation
— in Wisconsin
— pretended there was. Groups like that put governments, and their taxpayers, in precarious positions for no good reason.
The foundation and four members who are county residents sued in 2016, alleging the cross violated the Constitution’s ban on government endorsement of religion.
Lehigh had to decide whether to cave or fight. I’m glad it fought. It’s important to stand up to bullies. But the fight could have been costly, because if the county had lost, it could have been forced to pay the foundation’s legal fees.
The victory means the county didn’t pay a cent, as the case was handled for free by a public interest nonprofit Washington, D.C., law firm, Becket, that defends governments in such cases.
The Constitution doesn’t specifically ban governments from using religious symbols. What the “establishment clause” of the First Amendment says is: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
The question in these cases is whether the presence of a symbol endorses a particular faith or restricts others. The ruling on Aug. 8 by the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia said it does not.
“The Latin cross at issue here no doubt carries religious significance,” Circuit Judge Thomas Hardiman wrote in the opinion. “But more than seven decades after its adoption, the seal has become a familiar, embedded feature of Lehigh County, attaining a broader meaning than any one of its many symbols.”
The seal also contains images of grain silos, cement kilns, bison and other symbols of the county’s history. The county had argued the seal was historical, not religious.
I’ll repeat what I said in February when I wrote about this:
Governments certainly shouldn’t be erecting crosses on new buildings or monuments, or including them on new logos. That goes for putting up nativities at Christmas, too. We know better now; it sends the wrong message. Our forefathers who used crosses on government property and logos should have thought better of it. They don’t belong there.
But many symbols have been around longer than most of us have been alive. They should be left as they are, unless there’s proof that those governing with those symbols are religiously biased.
The circuit court’s ruling follows the logic the U.S. Supreme Court used in June to decide a similar case of a cross-shaped war memorial on a stateowned highway median in Bladensburg, Maryland.
The cross wasn’t erected by the government. It was built privately in 1925. The state acquired the land in 1961, at least partly because of safety concerns about increasing traffic around the cross.
The cross was challenged by local residents and the American Humanist Association. They wanted it removed or the memorial altered to a different shape.
The Supreme Court ruled it could remain, because preserving a longstanding religious monument is very different from allowing the building of a new one. The 3rd Circuit had delayed ruling in the Lehigh case until the Supreme Court decided its case.
I recognize that crosses and other religious symbols may offend people and cause them to question the intent. But a lot of things are offensive to people. We don’t tear them all down.
Unless you can prove a city, county or state is making decisions based on religion, it isn’t causing harm.
There’s always the chance that the Freedom From Religion Foundation will appeal the ruling and continue its vendetta against the county. But after suffering consecutive defeats in these cases, groups like that should get the message.