Posted on 03/30/2021 6:28:29 PM PDT by marshmallow
In Kelly v. Montana Department of Transportation, (D MT, March 23, 2021), a Montana federal district court adopted a magistrate's recommendations, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 55046 (D MT, March 9, 2021). The magistrate recommended dismissing 1st Amendment objections to the removal of a "spiritual cross" that plaintiff had erected along side of a highway in memory of his stepson. Rejecting free speech claims, the magistrate held that "a spiritual cross erected on public land adjacent to a highway constitutes government speech." Rejecting free exercise claims, the magistrate said in part:
Kelly does not allege that the Defendants prohibited him from freely exercising his religious beliefs though private speech.
(Excerpt) Read more at religionclause.blogspot.com ...
You are free to put it up. Government is free to take it down. If you want it to STAY up, put it up on private property.
Its on a piece of public land. So he probably didn’t even talk to the officials in charge before doing it.
This is a nothing burger.
Under the equal protection clause, ALL memorials to deceased loved ones HAVE to be removed. There is no freedom from religion guaranteed by the Bill of Rights or Constitution.
Yes, unfortunately I agree with the decision. You can’t put ads on public property without paying for them.
And it’s a religious symbol. Especially forbidden by the Constitution.
Conservative Christians should adopt the Rainbow flag minus a stripe.
Agreed. Don’t see any oppression or infringement of anyone’s religious liberties here
“Agreed. Don’t see any oppression or infringement of anyone’s religious liberties here”
Agree too, where does it end if allowed? Part of the reason that we need government is to manage public land...this seems to be part of that job.
Does placing political signs on government land or property (median strips, parks and public school land) also violate the law by using public property for partisan political purposes? I see it done all the time, with apparent impunity.
Free speech or not, those roadside memorial crosses signal better than anything when a stretch of road requires extra caution. Shame on Montana.
Precious government property protected from a cross but a border not protected from invaders.
Where, if I may ask?
When was the plaintiff not deemed “public”? The public owns public property, ROW and MDOT too.
Irrelevant. Shouldn't even be mentioned.
The sign in question is just as illegal as a sign proclaiming "Eat at Joe's."
Public land. No need to comment upon its contents.
Regards,
When I was growing up in Hawaii (TH), foot-long white memorial crosses were painted on the highway margins.
Now we have Diversity, and no reminders of road hazards.
Roadside memorial kills motorcyclist swerving to miss it as he tries to regain control after avoiding impaired driver on highway 61...
Back in the fifties and sixties the Ohio State Patrol would paint x’s on the road where people died. I remember traveling through Ohio to get to Michigan and as a kid knowing what the x’s were I recall seeing a lot of x’s sometimes and it was kind of freaky. But I guess that was the reasoning behind the practice.
What does the “(TH)” mean? It’s not an ordinal.
Courtesy of a rent-a-rig (oil) company, I worked in Venezuela in the ‘80s. We were driving along a road when, for the first time, I saw a clutch of crosses alongside the road. I said it was a strange place for a small cemetery (there were over 20) and was told that there was a custom of placing roadside crosses when someone was killed in an auto accident. In this case, a bus overturned.
A few years later, I started seeing them in California and evidently, that meme has caught on here.
Bullshit
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