COLUMBIA, S.C. (ABP) — South Carolinians who want to advertise their Christian faith on their car tags won’t get to anytime soon, according to a Dec. 11 ruling by a federal judge.
A mock-up of the proposed South Carolina license plate in question.
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In a preliminary injunction, United States District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie ordered state officials to halt production, sales, advertising and distribution of the new license plates. The tags feature a cross superimposed on a stylized stained-glass window and the inscription “I Believe” above the tag number and the name of the state.
In a five-page order, Currie said she issued the injunction because federal courts would likely find the law that created the plates a gross violation of the Constitution’s ban on government establishment of religion.
Currie noted that federal courts under 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, by which South Carolina is covered, use a three-pronged test established by the Supreme Court to determine if something violates the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. The so-called “Lemon Test” requires that any state law have a secular purpose, neither advance nor inhibit religion as its primary effect and not lead to “excessive entanglement” between religion and government.
“Based on the record now before the court, the court finds it unlikely that the I Believe Act satisfies even one of these three requirements. As the act must satisfy all three requirements to survive constitutional scrutiny, the court concludes that plaintiffs have made a strong showing of likelihood of success,” Currie wrote.
South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster, in a press statement, said he was “extremely disappointed in the court’s ruling” and believes that the plate “is completely constitutional.” He said he would urge the state motor-vehicles and corrections departments — named as defendants in the lawsuit challenging the plates — to appeal the injunction immediately to the 4th Circuit.
But opponents of the plate said the court did exactly what it was supposed to do. “The ‘I Believe’ license plate sends the message that South Carolina has a favored religion. That’s one message the state is not permitted to transmit,” said Ayesha Khan, legal director for Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
Khan and other attorneys argued the case before Currie on behalf of four South Carolina Christian and Jewish clergymen and Hindu and Arab organizations. They sued to prevent implementation of the law that created the plates, arguing that it was a clear endorsement of Christianity by the South Carolina Legislature. Lawmakers voted overwhelmingly in favor of creating the “I Believe” tags.
The plaintiffs noted that, at the time of its passage, some legislators who had voted for the “I Believe” law said that they would oppose efforts to create similar plates for Muslim South Carolinians.
Supporters of the plate — most prominently Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, who displays a mock-up of the plate on his state website — noted that the state already allows people from a number of identity groups to purchase specialized plates that advertise their favorite institution or cause. One, Bauer notes on his website, is sponsored by the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry and sports an American flag and the inscription, “In Reason We Trust.”
But those plates are different from the “I Believe” plate, plaintiffs argue, because they were not specifically established by legislative act. Instead, they are provided for under a state law that allows non-profit groups to create specialized tags as revenue-generating instruments as long as they can get at least 400 motorists to purchase them.
The case, Summers v. Adams, is the second time in as many years that the Palmetto State has had to defend a license tag created by legislative fiat. In 2006, the 4th Circuit — considered the most conservative of the nation’s appeals courts — ruled unconstitutional a license plate with an anti-abortion message because it violated the First Amendment’s free-speech provision.
That plate is now available, but is sponsored privately like other South Carolina specialty plates.
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Robert Marus is acting managing editor and Washington bureau chief for Associated Baptist Press.