Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty - Judge rules against “I Believe” license plates in South Carolina

Watch

SOLID, RELIABLE, CONFIDENT â€” these are three words that describe the Baptist Joint Committee as we carry out our work every day on Capitol Hill.

From the halls of Congress, to the agencies and in the courts, the BJC works to defend and extend God-given religious liberty for all people.

With its guarantees of our most fundamental freedoms, the First Amendment must be defended if we are to preserve religious liberty for everyone. Our challenge is great, but we are determined to meet it.

For more than 70 years, the BJC has sounded the alarm and fought the battles from our office on Capitol Hill. We are the only religious organization in the country that works solely on religious liberty issues.

As always, we need your financial support to continue to wage the fight for religious liberty.

Won't you make an investment in religious liberty for your children and grandchildren?

Donate

Home

News & Opinions

Press Room

Judge rules against “I Believe” license plates in South Carolina

Written by Jeff Huett
Tuesday, 10 November 2009
A federal district judge has ruled that a state-sponsored Christian license plate distributed in South Carolina is unconstitutional. The plates, which feature the phrase "I Believe" with a cross over a stained glass window, were designed as a result of the I Believe Act and passed in both houses of the South Carolina legislature before an injunction halted their distribution. In the ruling, U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie wrote that "this case presents a textbook example of the need for and continued vitality of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution ... . The United States Supreme Court has repeatedly warned that ‘government may not promote or affiliate itself with any religious doctrine or organization.'" Baptist Joint Committee General Counsel K. Hollyn Hollman applauded the decision. "Religion never benefits when government starts picking certain groups to receive special treatment," Hollman said. "That's precisely what was going on in South Carolina." The BJC and others have been quick to point out that the "I Believe" plates are different from other specialty plates. These plates were the product of a special initiative of the South Carolina legislature rather than through the normal Department of Motor Vehicles approval process based on a private application by a private organization. -30-

Related Items

Every Right to Exist Anywhere

Michael Kessler begins a column about the newest Muslim debate like this: With all the loud clamoring about the proposed Islamic Center to be built near Ground Zero, reasonable voices are hard to discern. One thing is clear: this is not a debate about religious freedom. A mosque by ...

Ohio Science Teacher Lawsuit Settles

Via Religion Clause, a lawsuit against controversial Ohio high school teacher John Freshwater has been settled, according to the Columbus Dispatch: The family of a boy who said his eighth-grade science teacher burned a cross on his arm with an electric lab instrument and taught Christ...

Subscribe to the
Baptist Joint Committee's
E-mail Updates