Missouri Fire Department Drops Christian Flag After Lawsuit Threats
The Freedom From Religion Foundation claimed victory after it forced a Missouri fire department to remove a Christian flag.
The atheist group had sent a threatening letter to the Diamond Missouri Fire Department demanding the small flag be removed from outside the building. Kansas City Star gave the organization editorial space to revel in its success.
The FFRF began its complaint with a letter sent to the Fire Chief Rebecca Dunn.
“The Christian flag, despite its benign origins, has unfortunately become heavily associated with white Christian nationalism and the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection,” the letter stated. “By flying the Christian flag on public property, the department is signaling official favoritism toward religion over nonreligion and Christianity over all other faiths.”
READ: Freedom From Religion Foundation goes after Oak Grove
Firefighters complied and posted on social media that the flag “has been taken down in compliance with constitutional law.”
A former court ruling outlined when a religious flag is private speech protected by the First Amendment and when it is government speech. The 2022 U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Harold Shurtleff, et al. v. Boston, MA, et al., that Boston officials could not prohibit a group from flying a Christian flag at city hall. The opinion was written by Justice Stephen Breyer. It argued “the First Amendment prevents [the government] from discriminating against speakers based on their viewpoint.”
In the Boston case, the city had approved 284 private flags and had never rejected one until a Christian organization wanted to raise a flag. The court ruled that Boston had, by raising so many flags, created a public forum and once it did that could not restrict the speech, or exclude, one group.
“We conclude that, on balance, Boston did not make the raising and flying of private groups’ flags a form of government speech,” he wrote. “That means, in turn, that Boston’s refusal to let Shurtleff and Camp Constitution raise their flag based on its religious viewpoint ‘abridged’ their ‘freedom of speech.’”
The atheist foundation argues that this case is different from the details in Boston; the fire station display “suggests that the department is controlling and choosing the flags displayed outside of its building, making the flags government speech. In contrast to Shurtleff, it seems that the department owns and controls the flags outside of its building, meaning the flag display is government speech, and the department may not use its speech to voice official approval for one religion over all others.”
–Dwight Widaman
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