If you want an example of what our federal court system has become, I give you the case of City of Ocala, Florida v Rojas.
I’ll quote the words of United States Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch from that Court’s March 20, 2023, order in that case — which is about a lawsuit filed by some “offended” atheists:
“Faced with tragedy, the city of Ocala, Florida, searched for ways to bring the community together. After a shooting spree left several children injured, police appealed to community leaders for help.
“A local NAACP official suggested to the chief of police that he contact religious leaders to facilitate conversations between residents and law enforcement. A local minister, in turn, proposed holding a prayer vigil for the victims. The chief agreed to organize the event and police chaplains participated in it.
“But instead of unity, litigation followed. Several atheists who chose to attend the event sued the city, alleging that the event’s religious themes violated the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.”
You read that right. Atheists who voluntarily attended what they knew was a prayer vigil, were offended that they heard prayers — so they sued the City of Ocala. You can’t make this up.
The atheists sued in Federal District Court in Florida. That judge ruled in favor of the atheists — finding that “the vigil violated the Establishment Clause”, and based his ruling on a 1971 Supreme Court decision (Lemon v Kurtzman).
However, in 2022, the Supreme Court itself overruled the Lemon decision. You can read about that 2022 decision (Kennedy v Bremerton School District) here.
Fortunately the Federal 11th Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the District Court’s ruling, and sent the lawsuit back to the District Court judge with instructions to — in effect — read the 2022 Supreme Court decision.
The City of Ocala appealed the 11th Circuit’s ruling to the Supreme Court, arguing the atheists’ lawsuit didn’t need to be reconsidered. Rather, the City argued, the 11th Circuit should have ordered the District Court to dismiss the lawsuit entirely — because, as the Supreme Court said in 2022, being offended was not a legal basis for the atheists to sue the city.
The Supreme Court refused to hear the city’s appeal. That refusal to hear the case is what Gorsuch explains in the order I quoted from above.
The result of the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the City’s appeal is that the 11th Circuit’s order vacating the District Court judge’s original ruling (in favor of the atheists) , and telling him to reconsider it, still stands. So now the suit goes back to the District Court for reconsideration. Got all that ?!?
Only one of the nine Supreme Court justices dissented from the court’s refusal to hear the City’s appeal. Justice Thomas agreed with the City that the case doesn’t need to be reconsidered by the District Court, because that judge was just plain wrong — as are the atheists. Thomas thinks the Supreme Court should order the lawsuit dismissed outright.
That’s the ‘legal mumbo-jumbo” about the case. Now let’s consider the atheists’ frivolous lawsuit from the point of old-fashioned common sense. Since none of the nine justices seem to agree with the atheists, Thomas’s position sounds like the most cost-effective resolution.
Members of the Ocala community, at the behest of the NAACP, joined with the police department to try and come up with a way to stem community violence. They all agreed that praying together could be a good place to start.
Whether you agree with that premise is irrelevant. It’s the path those most impacted by the violence chose to pursue. But because the old adage that “No good deed goes unpunished” is all to common in our litigious culture, someone is offended — and costs taxpayer resources to defend against a lawsuit.
Maybe I’m too dim-witted to understand why the atheists attended a prayer vigil if hearing prayers offends them. Unless, of course, they attended in order to be offended — and file a lawsuit.
Not being an atheist, I can only speculate what the atheists sought to gain from such a lawsuit. But, being a lawyer, I damn sure suspect what the attorney who represented them sought to gain. If the atheists win their lawsuit on the basis of a violation of their First Amendment right, the City of Ocala could have to pay the atheists’ lawyer fees. Hence the lawyer’s motivation for the lawsuit.
The atheists were represented in the original Florida District Court lawsuit by an attorney from Massachusetts. So the taxpaying African-American citizens of Ocala, Florida, who are trying to address the problem of violence in their community, are faced with having to pay a carpetbagger who’s demanding that a Federal District Court judge tell those citizens they can’t pray for their own children in a public gathering.
There is something fundamentally wrong with a legal system that would allow such a lawsuit to even be considered in the first place.
Gary Beatty lives between Florida and Pagosa Springs. He retired after 30 years as a prosecutor for the State of Florida, has a doctorate in law, is Board Certified in Criminal Trial law by the Florida Supreme Court, and is now a law professor.