Higher powerKentucky allowed to rely on God for homeland security

The Kentucky Court of Appeals recently ruled to allow the state to continue relying on God for help in homeland security matters.

A three-judge panel ruled two-to-one to reject a lower court decision to overturn state legislation to credit God with protecting the state.

In 2002 Kentucky lawmakers passed a “legislative finding” that the “safety and security of the commonwealth cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon Almighty God.” Meanwhile in the 2006 law that created the state’s Office of Homeland Security, lawmakers inserted language that required the department’s executive director to emphasize the state’s “dependence on Almighty God” during training sessions, educational materials, and in a plaque at its emergency operations center.

In response, ten residents challenged the law in 2008 arguing that it violated both the Kentucky and U.S. constitutions’ prohibition of state-sponsored religion. The residents won their case in 2009 with Franklin Circuit Judge Thomas Wingate arguing that the legislation violated the constitution by “[creating] an official government position on God.”

The state rushed to defend the law and nearly every state legislator as well as the attorney general filed legal briefs or made public statements in support of the law.

In one brief, signed by ninety-six of the state’s 100 representatives, supporters of the law argued that the laws were in line with past U.S. Supreme Court cases that described the United States as a “Christian nation.”

In the latest ruling, Judge Laurance B. VanMeter wrote in his majority opinion that “the legislation merely pays lip service to a commonly held belief in the puissance (power) of God.”

“The legislation complained of here does not seek to advance religion, nor does it have the effect of advancing religion, but instead seeks to recognize the historical reliance on God for protection,” VanMeter added.

Senior Judge Ann O’Malley Shake disagreed with her fellow judges arguing that Wingate was correct in his original ruling that the laws had an “impermissible effect of endorsing religion because it was enacted for a predominantly religious purpose and conveyed a message of mandatory religious belief.”

Edwin Kagan, the national legal director of American Atheists and the lawyer for the plaintiffs, was surprised by the judges’ decision.

“I’m a little stunned by the move toward a theocracy,” he said.

Kagan hopes the Kentucky Supreme Court will review the case.