I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
The U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled (PDF) that the city of Detroit did not violate the establishment clause of the First Amendment by giving more than $700,000 to several churches downtown to reimburse them for exterior renovations prior to the city’s hosting of the Super Bowl and the NCAA Final Four.
The case, brought by American Atheists Inc. and Americans United for Separation of Church and State against the Detroit Downtown Development Authority, stems from a program to beautify downtown Detroit in the last few years as the city prepared to host major sporting events.
Wanting the city to look its best for the hundreds of thousands of visitors and millions of television viewers, the city launched a program to help building owners in the vicinity of Ford Field and Comerica Park complete renovations to their exteriors to project a better image to the public. The program reimbursed owners up to 50 percent of the cost of such renovations.
But in the areas designated for this project were several churches, three of which took advantage of the program as well. Of the more than $11 million allocated to reimburse building owners for the cleanup project, about 6 percent, or $737,000, went to three churches in downtown Detroit.
The plaintiffs challenged this transfer of tax dollars to churches as a violation of the First Amendment. The U.S. District Court rejected that challenge and the appeals court has now upheld that ruling, concluding:
Everyone agrees that the program allocates benefits to a broad spectrum of entities on a neutral basis, as the City awards grants without regard to the religious, non-religious or areligious nature of the entity. The facial neutrality of the program, everyone also agrees, does not mask an intent to advance religion: Detroit sought to fix up its downtown, not to establish a religion. And as will generally be the case when a governmental program allocates generally available benefits on a neutral basis and without a hidden agenda, this program does not have the impermissible effect of advancing religion in general or any one faith in particular. By endorsing all qualifying applicants, the program has endorsed none of them, and accordingly it has not run afoul of the federal or state religion clauses.
The court applied what is known as the Lemon test to determine whether this program violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment. The three-prong test requires that a government action must have a secular purpose, must not have the primary effect of advancing religion and must not lead to excessive entanglement between church and state. The court ruled that the cleanup project violated none of those three prongs.
As a general rule, while the government cannot directly give taxpayer funds to a church or religious entity, a government benefit that is generally available to the public is also available to churches on equal footing with non-religious entities. For example, the government could not fund security services specifically for a church, but the police and fire departments will still respond to a church just as it would to a business or residence in cases of emergency.
Editor’s Note: The author of this post knows Richard Katskee, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs in this case. They were both involved in a more successful establishment clause case in federal court in 2005, Kitzmiller v Dover Area School District.
Clarification: This case was not, as stated above, brought by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Americans United filed an amicus brief in the case on behalf of a number of religious organizations, including the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and the American Jewish Committee. The group was then asked by American Atheists to present an oral argument before the court along with their own argument. Likewise, the federal government did an oral argument in support of the defendants and another Christian law firm, the Alliance Defense Fund, did the actual oral argument on behalf of the city. A very unusual situation. Thanks to Richard Katskee of Americans United for clarifying the situation and we apologize for the error.
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