Source: Trib Live
By Liz Hayes
A federal appellate court reinstated a New Kensington-Arnold School District parent’s lawsuit over a Ten Commandments monument in front of Valley Junior-Senior High School.
The U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday ruled parent Marie Schaub has standing to challenge whether the 60-year-old monument on public school grounds violates the constitutional demands for separation of church and state.
The appellate court ruled U.S. District Judge Terrence F. McVerry erred last summer when he dismissed the case because Schaub had only infrequent contact with the monument.
“A community member like Schaub may establish standing by showing direct, unwelcome contact with the allegedly offending object or event, regardless of whether such contact is infrequent or she does not alter her behavior to avoid it,” wrote Third Circuit Judge Patty Shwartz on behalf of the three-judge panel that heard the case in May.
“We are obviously very pleased the Court of Appeals has reversed the lower court’s ruling on standing and we’re looking forward to having our case heard on its merits,” Schaub wrote in an email to the Tribune-Review. “We are prepared to take this case to the (U.S. Supreme Court) and urge the District to relocate this religious monument to an appropriate location to save the taxpayers from wasting any more money on this unconstitutional endorsement of religion.”
New Kensington-Arnold Superintendent John Pallone did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday afternoon.
The district can request that the case be reheard by the full Third Circuit Court.
Only Schaub’s standing was reinstated. The Third Circuit panel agreed with McVerry that Schaub’s teenage daughter, identified only as Doe 1 in court proceedings, did not provide evidence that she was harmed by the monument at the time the lawsuit was filed in September 2012.
“In fact, it is not clear from the record that Doe 1 ever read or understood the monument until after the suit was filed,” Shwartz wrote.
Schaub has said she transferred her daughter to another school district to avoid her coming into contact with the monument when she began high school.
In addition to sending Schaub’s case back to McVerry’s courtroom, the Third Circuit remanded for further consideration whether Schaub was a member of the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation when the lawsuit was filed, which likely would give the organization standing in the case.
Categories: America, Church, Secularism, The Muslim Times, USA
To: The Third Circuit: ‘remanded for further consideration whether Schaub was a member of the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation’, a check on Schaub’s religious leaning would be more to the point, It would be no surprise to discover a Jew/hebrew identity. Nor would I be surprised to find that Schaub is a trumped up name to hide a Jew/hebrew identity.