Atheist Michael Newdow’s most recent attempt to eliminate the phrase “so help me God” from the presidential oath failed when a U.S. District judge rejected his lawsuit Thursday.
In 2001 and 2005, Newdow filed similar lawsuits, but they never went to trial. He is also known for unsuccessfully suing to strike references to God from the nation’s Pledge of Allegiance.
“The court made the only decision it could have made in Mr. Newdow’s ongoing anti-religious soap opera,” said Kevin Hasson, founder and president of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. “God has been invoked at every inaugural ceremony since George Washington and it is not only legal, but proper for Mr. Obama to do so on Tuesday.”
Newdow, along with lawyers from the D.C.-based American Humanist Association, argued that government neutrality ought to be the bottom line — not only among people of different faiths, but also between people who believe in God and people who don’t.
The lawsuit contended: “By placing ‘so help me God’ in its oaths and sponsoring prayers to God, government is lending its power to one side of perhaps the greatest religious controversy: God’s existence or non-existence.”
Hasson said in a statement Thursday: “The so-called doctrine of separation of church and state, which is never mentioned in our founding documents, only means that government should not establish, prefer or anoint one religion over another. Despite Dr. Newdow’s incessant legal badgering to the contrary, the Founding Fathers never meant for our government to be hostile toward religion in the public square.”
