← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · il ragno
Thread ID: 3888 | Posts: 2 | Started: 2002-12-07
2002-12-07 00:06 | User Profile
[url=http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/Midwest/11/30/scotus.display.ap/index.html]http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/Midwest/11/30/s...y.ap/index.html[/url]
Supreme Court says menorah can be displayed
Saturday, November 30, 2002 Posted: 11:39 AM EST (1639 GMT)
CINCINNATI, Ohio (AP) -- A Supreme Court ruling will allow a Jewish organization to display a menorah on a downtown plaza in Cincinnati, Ohio during the holidays.
The Supreme Court on Friday upheld U.S. District Judge Susan Dlott's ruling that the city of Cincinnati cannot bar Chabad of Southern Ohio from displaying a menorah on Fountain Square. The group is expected to have the menorah on display by Monday.
In its ruling that lifted a 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stay of Dlott's order, the Supreme Court noted the square's historic character as a public forum.
Mayor Charlie Luken, who has defended the city's ban on private displays, was disappointed in the Supreme Court action.
"I do tire of federal judges telling us what to do when they don't have to live with the consequences," Luken said.
The nonprofit Chabad challenged a municipal ordinance that says only the city can use Fountain Square during the last two weeks of November through the first week of January. The ordinance grew out of the city's efforts to prevent the Ku Klux Klan from erecting a cross during the Christmas season.
Over the city's objections, the Klan won rulings in federal courts entitling them to erect crosses on Fountain Square in the 1990s.
[Bill White: And it should be stated here that in response to those rulings, and, almost certainly, under pressure from Jewish groups, the city drafted this new law, which was designed to meet the "Constitutional" test for a ban on religious speech. From our understanding, it is this new law, which bans the crosses, that Chabad challenged.]
City lawyers argued last week that allowing private organizations to erect unattended displays would overcrowd the square and make it difficult for the city to keep order.
But Chabad, which has for years erected a large menorah on Fountain Square during the eight-day Hanukkah celebration, argued the ordinance violates the First Amendment guarantee of free speech.
"It's been a roller coaster of emotions as this was played out in three courts this week," Marc Mezibov, an attorney for the Jewish group, said Friday.
Dlott said in her ruling Wednesday the ordinance attempts to transform the square into a zone where only the city's message is welcome. She ordered the city to provide permits allowing Chabad to erect a menorah during the holidays.
After Dlott ruled, the city immediately asked the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for an emergency stay. A few hours later, the appeals court granted the stay until the case was resolved on appeal.
Messages seeking comment from city solicitor Rita McNeil were left at her home and office Friday night.
[Bill White: America, the world's other Jewish state. Note that Chabad is one of the most racist and extreme of the Jewish sects, and it is the movement which has worked to ban Santa Claus and other non-Jewish religious displays, as it believes as doctrine that non-Jews are heretics and their religions must be stamped out and replaced by Judaism.]
2002-12-08 02:51 | User Profile
When in Israel last year, the Hotel I was staying in said it was against the law in Israel to display a Chritmas Tree....amazing how the Jews seem to justify their religious zealous desires here in America but disallow them in their own country.