Newdow v. Roberts; December 29, 2008

 94. As it is, Atheists are the most despised minority in the land.³⁶ Plaintiffs contend that it is the sort of government-sponsored activity at issue in this case – i.e., where the “power, prestige and financial support”³⁷ of government is placed behind Monotheism – that stigmatizes them and perpetuates, if not instigates, this situation.

95. Defendants are acting in concert to further worsen the social condition of Plaintiffs. They are engaging in and promoting governmental activities that (a) will exacerbate Plaintiffs’ “outsider” status, (b) will have religious purposes, (c) will have religious effects, (d) will endorse the purely religious notion that there exists a God, (e) will show a preference for that exclusionary religious belief, (f) will affiliate government with that religious belief, (g) will signal the disapproval of Plaintiffs’ religious views, (h) will violate the governmental neutrality required in matters of religion, (i) will inculcate the specific religious belief that God exists (and likely the specific religious belief that Jesus Christ is the Son of God), and (j) will place government’s “imprimatur” on those specific religious beliefs.

96. Moreover, Defendants know that they will impose these harms not only upon the adult plaintiffs in this case, but upon the minor plaintiffs as well.

97. Such impositions, upon impressionable young children, amount to the coercive imposition of religious dogma specifically denounced by the Supreme Court in nine out of nine public school cases (where religious dogma is imposed upon children in a governmental setting). McCollum v. Board of Education, 333 U.S. 203 (1948) (religious teaching); Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962) (prayer); Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203 (1963) (Bible-reading); Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97 (1968) (forbidding the teaching of evolution); Stone v. Graham, 449 U.S. 39 (1980) (posting Ten Commandments); Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38 (1985) (moment of silence/prayer); Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578 (1987) (“creation science”); Lee v. Weisman, 505 U.S. 577 (1992) (graduation benedictions); and Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe, 530 U.S. 290 (2000) (prayer at football games).

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36 “Atheists are at the top of the list of groups that Americans find problematic … It is striking that the rejection of Atheists is so much more common than rejection of other stigmatized groups.” Edgell P, Hartmann D, and Gerteis J. Atheists as “other”: Moral Boundaries and Cultural Membership in American Society. American Sociological Review, Vol. 71 (April, 2006), p. 211-234 at 230.

³⁷ Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421, 431 (1962). See note 32, supra