For Immediate Release
Contact:
Sam Gerard, sgerard@americanhumanist.org, 202-238-9088×105
(Washington, DC, July 20, 2020) – In a federal court brief filed on Friday, the American Humanist Association (AHA), defends the City of Boston’s refusal to fly a Christian flag outside of Boston’s City Hall. The amicus brief (“friend of the court” brief), co-signed by several organizations, urges the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit to uphold lower court’s ruling that flags displayed at the City Hall constitute government speech and must therefore comply with the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause requiring separation of church and state.
“Prominently displaying the Christian flag alongside the national and state flags, on quintessential government property no less, would constitute tacit governmental endorsement of Christianity in violation of the Establishment Clause,” AHA Legal Director and Senior Counsel Monica Miller proclaimed.
AHA Executive Director Roy Speckhardt observed: “Flying a Christian flag at Boston’s City Hall would reinforce the misleading belief that the United States is a Christian nation.”
Other co-signers of the brief, authored by the Americans United For Separation of Church and State, include the Methodist Federation for Social Action and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association among others.
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The American Humanist Association (AHA) works to protect the rights of humanists, atheists, and other nontheistic Americans. The AHA advances the ethical and life-affirming worldview of humanism, which—without beliefs in gods or other supernatural forces—encourages individuals to live informed and meaningful lives that aspire to the greater good of humanity.
Special thanks to the Louis J. Appignani Foundation for their support of the Appignani Humanist Legal Center.