Jurist's record
troubles church-state watchdog
By GREG TUFARO. thnt
Online, October 3, 2007
A religious-liberty watchdog group
representing the East Brunswick school district in its appeal of a lower-court
ruling that allows high school football coach Marcus Borden to show respect for
team prayer previously has said one of the federal judges hearing the appeal
could blur the line separating church and state.
Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, which is representing
East Brunswick Public Schools pro bono, joined more than a dozen other
civil-rights groups in urging the U.S. Senate to reject the confirmation of D.
Michael Fisher in 2003 to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Prior to his confirmation, the groups, in a joint letter, wrote in part: "The
Fisher nomination will raise serious concerns for anyone concerned about the
separation of church and state."
If correct about Fisher, a nominee of President Bush, the hopes of the district
may rest with judges Theodore McKee and Maryanne Trump Barry, both nominees of
former President Clinton.
McKee has previously ruled on another school-prayer appeal. A former
college football player, he brings to the bench a locker-room experience of
having engaged in a moment of silence before games rather than one of team
prayer.
McKee is a 1969 graduate of State University of New York at Cortland. He
played defensive end there, backing up starter Rodney Verkey, who said Cortland
players never prayed together.
"We had a moment of silence where everybody did their own thing," said Verkey.
"One of our assistant coaches would tell us (in the locker room before games)
that we had about 30 seconds of silence and to do our own thing."
McKee wrote an en banc opinion for the Third Circuit in a 1995 appeal involving
the ACLU and Edward Ross against the Black Horse Pike Regional Board of
Education that banned student-led graduation prayers throughout New Jersey,
Pennsylvania and Delaware.
Stanford University's Hoover Institution, a public-policy research center, said:
"Judge McKee's radical opinion went further than the U.S. Supreme Court has ever
gone in this area by outlawing student-led graduation prayers."
The facts in that case differ from those in the appeal of Borden's lower-court
ruling, which permits the coach to show respect for religion by silently bowing
his head and "taking a knee" with players as they pray before games.
Barry, who is pro-abortion and the older sister of billionaire real-estate mogul
Donald Trump, received a student-sponsored award amid protests of right-to-life
groups in 2004 from Seton Hall Law School where Borden's attorney, Ronald J.
Riccio, is currently a professor and previously served as dean.
The university avoided a similar fate in 1998 when then Gov. Christie Todd
Whitman, a supporter of abortion rights, was honored with the same Sandra Day
O'Connor Medal of Honor. It did so by moving the event off campus, a
maneuver that Riccio, who at the time was the law school's dean, protested by
declining to accept a prestigious award he himself was to receive from the
university's administration and alumni association.
Riccio is representing Borden pro bono to protect the coach's same right to
academic freedom, which the lower court ruled, among other rights, East
Brunswick Public Schools violated.
gtufaro@thnt.com
|
