This is disappointing: An Appeals Court has ruled in favor of a Christian logo representing a Pennsylvania county, overturning an earlier ruling that said (fairly obviously) that the symbol was a promotion of religion. The battle began in 2016 when the lawsuit was filed. A judge later declared that the official seal for Lehigh County illegally promoted Christianity due to the giant cross right in the center of it. While city commissioners were given weeks to provide any evidence in defense of the cross, they failed to do so, so the judge gave them 180 days to stop using it. The Lehigh County Commissioners, however, chose to appeal the decision… and that’s partly because Judge Edward Smith gave such a wishy-washy ruling on the matter. Smith admitted the “inclusion of the cross lacked a secular purpose” and that “a reasonable observer would perceive the seal as endorsing Christianity.” However, he also said in his ruling that he didn’t want to rule in favor of the Freedom From Religion Foundation because he knew the County wasn’t trying to promote Christianity. Just look at how he wrote about the matter: Just as the Supreme Court has upheld legislative prayer as “simply […]
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