FFRF Staff Attorney Sammi Lawrence has written an op-ed for the Kansas City Star highlighting a recent notable Freedom From Religion Foundation victory regarding a Christian flag. 

“The fire department of the city of Diamond, Mo., was flying the Christian flag outside its station. The Christian flag represents Christianity and Christianity only, and the flag has become heavily associated with white Christian nationalism, as the Freedom From Religion Foundation (the group I work for) has pointed out,” Lawrence writes. “We sent a letter to the Diamond Fire Department requesting that it remove the flag in order to comply with the First Amendment. A public fire department has no reason to show official support for a religion, especially given that the department is tasked with serving the entire community — regardless of people’s faith or lack thereof.”

Lawrence continues the op-ed by emphasizing the importance of FFRF’s mission, and the dangers of a government entity promoting religion: 

The government has no business throwing its support behind a religion. Yet, every year, we receive complaints from community members across the country because their local governments feel the need to display support for the preferred religion of their government officials. 

There are numerous reasons why government entities should think twice before putting up religious displays. When the government promotes religion, it alienates community members who adhere to a different faith as well as those who are nonreligious. Flying the Christian flag on department property needlessly excludes those among the 38 percent of Missourians who are non-Christians, including the one in three who are religiously unaffiliated. Public services such as fire departments are meant to protect and serve the entire community, not just people who have a certain religion. Religious displays on government property like the city of Diamond Fire Department’s also invite legal scrutiny and potentially litigation. 

In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Shurtleff v. city of Boston that the city violated the First Amendment in denying a group’s request to fly the Christian flag because when it adopted its flag policy allowing outside groups to fly their flags, the city created a “public forum.” But the Diamond Fire Department’s display differed from Boston’s in a significant way. Since the flags flown outside the station are apparently controlled and selected by the department, this means the flags are government speech in a government forum and the Diamond Fire Department can’t constitutionally use its speech and power to voice official approval for religion. By displaying the Christian flag on its property, the fire department clearly showed support for Christianity — and only Christianity — in violation of the First Amendment.

Lawrence finishes by reminding readers of the government’s constitutional duty: “We hope that the removal of the Christian flag allows the city of Diamond Fire Department to instead concentrate on fighting fires and protecting its community members — irrespective of which religion, if any, they believe in.”

You can read the full op-ed here.

This column is part of FFRF’s initiative to engage with pertinent national and state issues and spread the messages of freethought and nontheism to a broader audience.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With about 41,000 members across the country, including hundreds of members in Missouri, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.

The post Kansas City Star runs FFRF attorney’s op-ed on recent constitutional win appeared first on Freedom From Religion Foundation.