The Christ Child Goes to Court

I. The ACLU and Pawtucket's Christmas Display: The Controversy Unfolds

1_ THE ACLU AND PAWTUCKET'S CHRISTMAS DISPLAY: The Controversy Unfolds I am sorry that the Mayor doesn't recognize the constitutional obligation he is under to uphold the First Amendment. The principle of separation of church and state is a very important one and a Nativity Scene display sponsored and paid for by the City can be extremely offensive to members of other faiths. The Mayor and other city officials simply have no business getting involved in religious activity. Stephen Brown, executive director of the Rhode Island chapter of the ACLU Every Christmas needs a Scrooge and the ACLU is the Scrooge this year. Pawtucket mayor Dennis M. Lynch T HE UNITED STATES HAD KNOWN better times than December 1980. Anxieties ran high. The holiday spirit was not all bright lights and tinsel. The economy was out of control. Numbers told the story. Unemployment, interest rates, and inflation were all in double digits. OPEC had become a symbol of anger Copyrighted Material II __ THE ACLU AND PAWTUCKET'S CHRISTMAS DISPLAY / 12 - and frustration as gasoline and heating oil costs soared over a dollar a gallon. Daily reminders by the media that fifty-three American hostages in Iran were in their fourteenth month of captivity had an hypnotizing and psychologically draining effect. Jimmy Carter was about to vacate the White House. Ronald Reagan was waiting in the wings. Gallup reported that Pope John Paul II was America's most admired leader. In Pawtucket, Rhode Island, the city's colorful Christmas display belied the real holiday mood. A mixture of fear and apprehension about the rising costs of food, fuel, and housing, not to mention Christmas gifts, gripped the city. One resident complained , "There's just no way out of the vicious circle they're putting people into. It keeps getting worse and worse. It wipes the Christmas spirit right out." I As if national political and economic woes were not enough to dampen the holiday season, Pawtucket became the hotbed of its own controversy in 1980. At the center of the conflict was a city-owned Nativity scene. On 17 December 1980, just eight days before Christmas, the Rhode Island affiliate of the ACLU took Pawtucket to court. The suit, filed in the U.S. district court in Providence, alleged that the manger scene in the city's Christmas display was a violation of the First Amendment's provisions relating to separation of church and state. (Because the suit concerned a potential violation of the national Constitution, the case was tried in a federal rather than a state court.) Specifically the ACLU complained that Pawtucket 's use of taxpayers' money to support a religious display that depicted the biblical description of the birth of Christ amounted to government promotion of religion, a practice, they argued, that clearly contravened the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The lawsuit was brought on behalf of Daniel Donnelly, a Pawtucket resident and ACLU member. Donnelly agreed to become coplaintiff at the request of Stephen Brown, the executive director of the Rhode Island ACLU. Brown sought Donnelly'S Copyrighted Material - - THE ACLU AND PAWTUCKET'S CHRISTMAS DISPLAY / 13 __ support after he received an anonymous phone call from a Pawtucket woman who objected to the Nativity scene. Named as defendants were Pawtucket's mayor, Dennis M. Lynch, the city finance director, Richard A. Mumford, and the parks and recreation director, Guy Dufault. The ACLU asked the court to issue a temporary restraining order, which would require the immediate removal of the manger scene from the display. Two days after the suit was filed, Raymond J. Pettine, chief judge of the federal district court, postponed a ruling on the request for the restraining order. The judge stated that the Pawtucket dispute raised serious and delicate questions of constitutionallaw , which deserved more thorough consideration than he could give if pressed for an immediate decision. Pettine also noted that the suit came "less than a week before Christmas, at a time when emotions run high and the response to a case of this type is likely to be grounded in passion rather than reason." 2 A fact-finding trial was scheduled for early in the new year. The constitutional issue raised by Donnelly v. Lynch is not a simple one. (At this point in the case Donnelly's name is listed first because he is the petitioner. Mayor Lynch is the defendant. When the case...