The Supreme Court denied hearing a petition from the Catholic Church on Monday challenging the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s policy banning religious advertising as a violation of the First Amendment.
The case was set in motion after WMATA refused to run a Christmas ad from the church in 2017. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit previously upheld the ban on religious messages on buses and trains and in stations as lawful and free from discrimination, The Washington Post reported.
While Justice Neil M. Gorsuch and Justice Clarence Thomas agree that the decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit was wrong, the Supreme Court chose not to review the case because Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was involved with the lower court’s ruling, had to recuse himself from the case.
“Because the full Court is unable to hear this case, it makes a poor candidate for our review,” Gorsuch wrote.
In his dissent, Gorsuch argued that WMATA’s policy is a clear case of “viewpoint discrimination.”
“At Christmastime a few years ago, the Catholic Church sought to place advertisements on the side of local buses in Washington, D. C. The proposed image was a simple one — a silhouette of three shepherds and sheep, along with the words ‘Find the Perfect Gift’ and a church website address. No one disputes that, if Macy’s had sought to place the same advertisement with its own website address, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) would have accepted the business gladly,” he noted.
SOURCE: Christian Post, Leonardo Blair
All Content & Images are provided by the acknowledged source