{"id":250,"date":"2008-10-30T21:15:14","date_gmt":"2008-10-31T04:15:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=250"},"modified":"2015-06-27T19:16:53","modified_gmt":"2015-06-27T22:16:53","slug":"new-weinstein-lawsuit-case-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2008\/10\/30\/new-weinstein-lawsuit-case-law\/","title":{"rendered":"New Weinstein Lawsuit Case Law"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prior to\u00a0dropping\u00a0its previous lawsuit<\/a> against the\u00a0Department of Defense, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation filed a new lawsuit on behalf of an Army soldier who was required to attend military formations at which “sectarian Christian” prayers were delivered.<\/p>\n

The relief sought by the MRFF is not that the prayers end, but that the soldier not be required to attend those mandatory formations.\u00a0 The unwieldiness of implementing this relief\u00a0would have the effect of requiring all mandatory formations (whether in fact or perceived) to be free from sectarian prayer (which the 11th Circuit said<\/a> would be impossible to define), or simply free from any prayer at all.<\/p>\n

In its current filing, the MRFF does not attempt to prove that the prayers advanced a religion\u00a0or disparaged another, but instead decries the\u00a0prayers themselves in the presence of non-faith adherents.\u00a0 The MRFF also does not assert that the prayers establish a government religion; again, the relief sought is not the end of the prayers, only the ability to be absent from them.\u00a0 Had the prayers violated the Establishment Clause, the logical relief would be their cessation.\u00a0 The primary<\/em> allegation, then, is not that the prayers advance a religion, but that they are offensive to those not of that religion.<\/p>\n

The MRFF then cites 17 unrelated (and often vague or unsubstantiated) allegations that purport to prove that the military prayers are “evidence” of institutional support of the Christian faith.\u00a0 (These are essentially a laundry list of the complaints Weinstein has collected to date, none of which have anything to do with the atheist soldier’s complaint; several of them date to 2006.\u00a0 Over the past years they have been consistently recycled into the most current iteration of accusations against the military; in fact, most were included in the previous lawsuit that was just dropped.)<\/p>\n

For example, a nearly two-page diatribe is leveled against Campus Crusade for Christ, even though Campus Crusade is not a plaintiff, is not a government entity bound by the Establishment Clause (which is the legal basis for\u00a0the suit), and is not accused of wrongdoing, even in\u00a0the lawsuit itself.\u00a0 The lawsuit mentions neither what Campus Crusade did wrong, nor how the lawsuit against the Department of Defense would relieve that grievance.\u00a0 The lawsuit also repeats complaints about the 523rd Fighter Squadron “Crusaders,” even though, as repeatedly pointed out<\/a>, they no longer exist.<\/p>\n

The MRFF cites three instances in which the soldier was required to attend formations with Christian prayers; however, as the courts have noted, the mere fact that\u00a0a single faith group is represented (even repeatedly)\u00a0does not result in “establishment.”\u00a0 Even if it did, the Department of Defense would only have to provide negative examples.\u00a0 That is, they would need only show\u00a0that a\u00a0non-sectarian prayer (if it could be defined by the plaintiff) or a non-Christian prayer was delivered at a mandatory function.\u00a0 As these routinely happen (both “imperceptibly religious” prayers as well as those delivered by non-Christian Chaplains), it would be a fairly easy argument to refute.<\/p>\n

It is also worth remembering that the Air Force and Navy both attempted to institute guidelines<\/a> regarding the content of prayers at mandatory functions (that would have effectively made the lawsuit moot).\u00a0 Those regulations were rescinded not by the Department of Defense, but by Congress — which is authorized by the Constitution to make military law. Thus, it would appear that if the MRFF wants to influence prayer in the military, then the appropriate defendant is not the military, but Congress.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most important weakness in the lawsuit against the DoD is provided by the MRFF itself.\u00a0 The relief that the plaintiff seeks is the freedom\u00a0to not attend mandatory\u00a0military functions in which there is a “sectarian prayer.”\u00a0 Thus, the content of the prayer (Christian or not) is irrelevant to the case at hand; he does not, after all, request relief from only Christian<\/em> prayers, nor would such a request be consistent with the premise of the suit.<\/p>\n

Thus, the court does not have to address allegations of pervasive Christianity in order to address the plaintiff’s alleged harm (exposure to religion at mandatory formations).\u00a0 This eliminates the 17 examples in the suit, since they deal only with Christian issues irrelevant to prayer at mandatory formations.\u00a0 Instead of answering a question as to Christian endorsement or favoritism in the military, the only true question in the suit is whether or not an atheist should be required to attend events where sectarian prayers, regardless of faith\u00a0tradition,\u00a0are delivered.<\/p>\n

The fact that Weinstein recycles allegations from one lawsuit to the next seems to indicate that he views the plaintiff as a mere vehicle for his agenda.\u00a0 (In fact, there are indications that he abandoned the first lawsuit, and moved his allegations to the new one, because he believed the newer one stood a better chance in litigation.)\u00a0 The soldier’s specific complaint is irrelevant to the MRFF; it is merely a means to attempt to get Weinstein’s laundry list of accusations into a courtroom in the hopes that the court will rule on a “bigger issue” than the complaint at hand.<\/p>\n

In 2006, Judge Parker dismissed Weinstein’s first lawsuit in part because it contained only unrelated and vague allegations with no evidence of actual harm to any plaintiff.\u00a0 It does not appear that this lawsuit improves on that failure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Prior to\u00a0dropping\u00a0its previous lawsuit against the\u00a0Department of Defense, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation filed a new lawsuit on behalf of an Army soldier who was required to attend military formations at which “sectarian Christian” prayers were delivered. The relief sought by the MRFF is not that the prayers end, but that the soldier not be required to attend those mandatory […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[251,88,69,4,82,85,2,5218,7,11],"class_list":["post-250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-523rd","tag-army","tag-campus-crusade","tag-churchandstate","tag-constitution","tag-mikey-weinstein","tag-military","tag-military-religious-freedom-foundation","tag-mrff","tag-prayer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}