Original Photography by George Bannister (Licensed)
Original Photography by George Bannister (Licensed)

The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania dismissed an Establishment Clause challenge to a Ten Commandments monument located on the lawn outside a local high school, in Freedom From Religion Foundation v. New Kensington-Arnold School District (W.D. PA July 27, 2015).  The monument, six feet tall and weighing 2,000 pounds, sits on a grassy area between two sidewalks in the vicinity of Defendant School District’s (“School District”) high school gymnasium.  The Court found that the plaintiffs in this case, a mother and a daughter living in the School District, only had limited contact with the monument with virtually no injury, and were therefore without standing to pursue the merits of their lawsuit.

Plaintiff mother is an atheist who objects to the Ten Commandments monument on the high school grounds, but had only been to the school a handful of times to see the monument.  She viewed the monument once when dropping off her sister at the high school and again when attending a karate event at the school.  Although she did not stop to read the monument in full, she testified that when she saw the line “I am the Lord thy God,” her “stomach turned and [sh]e just kept on walking.”  Plaintiff mother believes that the presence of the monument signals that she is an outsider, and she does not want her daughter to attend a school that endorses religion.

Plaintiff daughter was a middle school student at the time the lawsuit commenced.  She had never been a student at the high school, but used the swimming pool there with her daycare program in grades three through five, and attended a karate event at the high school with her mother.  She also viewed the monument while driving to the house of a friend who lives near the high school.

Applying the “direct unwelcome contact” standard, the Court concluded that the plaintiffs had not been injured by the presence of the Ten Commandments monument on the high school lawn for purposes of standing.  Specifically, they were not forced to come into “direct, regular, and unwelcome contact” with the monument,  Plaintiff mother’s contact with the monument was only “sporadic and remote” because she could recount only a handful of occasions she observed the monument.  While Plaintiff mother testified that her “stomach turned” when she saw the monument, she also testified that it did not occur to her that the monument was inappropriately placed on school grounds, and the offense caused to her only began to manifest itself after commencing suit.

Plaintiff daughter’s injury was found to be even more tenuous, since she was never a student at the high school.  She testified that when she saw the monument, she “was young so [she] didn’t really know what it meant.”  Although Plaintiff daughter was removed from the School District and placed in a different school system, this “injury” occurred after suit was brought.  Further, to have standing, a plaintiff must demonstrate a real threat of future injury.  The decision to remove Plaintiff daughter from the School District undermined any possible claim of future injury.

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Photo of Evan Seeman Evan Seeman

Evan J. Seeman is a lawyer in Robinson+Cole’s Hartford office and focuses his practice on land use, real estate, environmental, and regulatory matters, representing local governments, developers and advocacy groups. He has spoken and written about RLUIPA, and was a lead author of…

Evan J. Seeman is a lawyer in Robinson+Cole’s Hartford office and focuses his practice on land use, real estate, environmental, and regulatory matters, representing local governments, developers and advocacy groups. He has spoken and written about RLUIPA, and was a lead author of an amicus curiae brief at the petition stage before the United States Supreme Court in a RLUIPA case entitled City of San Leandro v. International Church of the Foursquare Gospel.

Evan serves as the Secretary/Treasurer of the APA’s Planning & Law Division. He also serves as the Chair of the Planning & Zoning Section of the Connecticut Bar Association’s Young Lawyers Section, and is the former Co-Chair of its Municipal Law Section. He has been named to the Connecticut Super Lawyers® list as a Rising Star in the area of Land Use Law for 2013 and 2014. He received his B.A. in political science and Russian studies (with honors) from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where he was selected as the President’s Fellow in the Department of Modern Languages and Literature. Evan received his Juris Doctor at the University of Connecticut School of Law, where he served on the Connecticut Law Review. While in law school, he interned with the Connecticut Office of the Attorney General in the environmental department, and served as a judicial intern for the judges of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Court. Following law school, Evan clerked for the Honorable F. Herbert Gruendel of the Connecticut Appellate Court.

Photo of Dwight Merriam Dwight Merriam

Dwight H. Merriam founded Robinson+Cole’s Land Use Group in 1978. He represents land owners, developers, governments and individuals in land use matters, with a focus on defending governments in RLUIPA cases. Dwight is a Fellow and Past President of the American Institute of…

Dwight H. Merriam founded Robinson+Cole’s Land Use Group in 1978. He represents land owners, developers, governments and individuals in land use matters, with a focus on defending governments in RLUIPA cases. Dwight is a Fellow and Past President of the American Institute of Certified Planners, a former Director of the American Planning Association (APA), a former chair of APA’s Planning and Law Division, Immediate Past Chair of the American Bar Association’s Section of State and Local Government Law, Chair of the Institute of Local Government Studies at the Center for American and International Law, a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, a member of the Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute National Advisory Board, a Fellow of the Connecticut Bar Foundation, a Counselor of Real Estate, a member of the Anglo-American Real Property Institute, and a Fellow of the American College of Real Estate Lawyers.

He teaches land use law at the University of Connecticut School of Law and at Vermont Law School and has published over 200 articles and eight books, including Inclusionary Zoning Moves Downtown, The Takings Issue, The Complete Guide to Zoning, and Eminent Domain Use and Abuse: Kelo in Context. He is the senior co-author of the leading casebook on land use law, Planning and Control of Land Development (Eighth Edition). Dwight has written and spoken widely on how to avoid RLUIPA claims and how to successfully defend against them in court. He is currently writing a book on the subject, RLUIPA DEFENSE, for the American Bar Association.

Dwight has been named to the Connecticut Super Lawyers® list in the area of Land Use Law since 2006, is one of the Top 50 Connecticut Super Lawyers in Connecticut, and is one of the Top 100 New England Super Lawyers (Super Lawyers is a registered trademark of Key Professional Media, Inc.). He received his B.A. (cum laude) from the University of Massachusetts, his Masters of Regional Planning from the University of North Carolina, where he was the graduation speaker in 2011, and his J.D. from Yale. He is a featured speaker at many land use seminars, and presents monthly audio land use seminars for the International Municipal Lawyers Association. Dwight has been cited in the national press from The New York Times to People magazine and has appeared on NBC’s The Today Show, MSNBC and public television.

Dwight also had a career in the Navy, serving for three tours in Vietnam aboard ship, then returning to be the Senior Advisor of the Naval ROTC Unit at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill where he taught Defense Administration and Military Management as an Assistant Professor in the undergraduate and graduate curriculum in Defense Administration and Military Management. He left active duty after seven years to attend law school, but continued on for 24 more years as a reserve Surface Warfare Officer with two major commands, including that of the reserve commanding officer of the Naval Undersea Warfare Center. He retired as a Captain in 2009 after 31 years of service.