Lawsuit threatened over atheist councilman in NC AP

[Jamastiene]

Lawsuit threatened over atheist councilman in NC
AP

By ALYSIA PATTERSON, Associated Press Writer Alysia Patterson, Associated Press Writer – 47 mins ago

RALEIGH, N.C. – Asheville City Councilman Cecil Bothwell believes in ending the death penalty, conserving water and reforming government — but he doesn't believe in God. His political opponents say that's a sin that makes him unworthy of serving in office, and they've got the North Carolina Constitution on their side.

Bothwell's detractors are threatening to take the city to court for swearing him in, even though the state's antiquated requirement that officeholders believe in God is unenforceable because it violates the U.S. Consititution.

"The question of whether or not God exists is not particularly interesting to me and it's certainly not relevant to public office," the recently elected 59-year-old said.

Bothwell ran this fall on a platform that also included limiting the height of downtown buildings and saving trees in the city's core, views that appealed to voters in the liberal-leaning community at the foot of the Appalachian Mountains. When Bothwell was sworn into office on Monday, he used an alternative oath that doesn't require officials to swear on a Bible or reference "Almighty God."

<snip>
More at link:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091211/ap_on_re_us/us_godless_politician


I hope he fights it all the way to the US Supreme Court. That law is unconstitutional.

[kirby]

1. NAACP...

It is sickening that a former NAACP local president is behind this.

[MadMaddie]

3. And people like him are why the NAACP is not even a shadow

of it's former self.

[darkstar3]

5. Be careful.

Go read the article. I think he's playing a game. I think that he's trying to make it seem like he's genuinely opposed to an atheist office holder so his lawsuit won't get thrown out of court without being heard. I think his real purpose here is to challenge this law and get it repealed.

It's this section I find telling:
Even if he can't force Bothwell out of office, Edgerton said he hopes a legal battle would ultimately force North Carolina's Legislature to determine the legality of the article of the Constitution.

"If the law is wrong, it is the obligation of the Legislature to say it's wrong," he said.

Sometimes, you have to play your own straight-man to get shit done.

[ZombieHorde]

8. That is a pretty interesting quote. I may have miss judged this individual.

Thanks for the alternate perspective.

[struggle4progress]

6. The NAACP suspended his chapter for nonpayment of dues when he was in charge a decade back; and

then they had new elections and booted him.

[baldguy]

2. Wiki calls it an "Infeasible Provision".

"As per the Federal Supremacy Clause, all Federal law and the Constitution of the United States overrule the North Carolina Constitution. There are several provisions in the current North Carolina Constitution that may conflict with federal law and/or the US Constitution.

At least two provisions, carried over from the 1868 Constitution, are not enforced either because they are known to be void or would almost certainly be struck down in court.

* Article 6, section 8 disqualifies from office any person who shall deny the being of Almighty God. This article was carried over verbatim from the 1868 Constitution. However, in 1961, the federal Supreme Court, in Torcaso v. Watkins threw out a similar provision in the Maryland Constitution on the grounds that it violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the US Constitution. The First Amendment bars Congress from passing any law "respecting an establishment of religion," and this provision has long been considered binding on the states under the liberty clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. As a result, it has never been enforced. This provision was explicitly challenged and overturned by Vosswinkel v. Hunt, 1979."

[struggle4progress]

4. Hill Street Baptist Church bans Confederate-style funeral (David Morgan's Asheville Tribune)

<2005> Anna Bell Edgerton, age 80, .. mother of seven, passed away Jan. 16 ... Numbered among Mrs. Edgerton’s children are Southern Heritage activists H.K. Edgerton .. a former president of the Asheville Chapter of the NAACP ... Mrs. Edgerton’s life was to have been celebrated at a Confederate funeral at Hill St. Baptist ... Hart Funeral Home received a call from the church stating that the funeral could not be held there ... Southern rights activist attorney Kirk Lyons spoke on behalf of the Sons of Confederate Veterans ... Mrs. Edgerton’s coffin was carried on a horse-drawn wagon with her son, H.K. following along carrying the Southern Cross of St. Andrew flag ... H.K. was highly complimentary of funeral director Darryl Hart ... “Also, the Sons of Confederate Veterans were so gracious and kind. My Mom had a Confederate honor guard who stood watch over her all the time she was at the funeral home ... I was proud accompany my Mom to the cemetery, carrying the flag. It is our flag, the flag of our Southern heritage.” http://www.ashevilletribune.com/archives/Hil_%20Street.htm

Intelligence Report
Spring 2006
Into The Wild
Leaner and meaner under a new leader, the Sons of Confederate Veterans heads into more and more radical territory.
by Heidi Beirich and Mark Potok
... "The slackers and the grannies have been purged from our ranks," Kirk Lyons, a radical who first floated the idea of taking over the SCV in a 2000 meeting of neo-Nazis and former Klansmen, exulted in December. Now, Lyons added, the SCV needs to become "a modern, 21st century Christian war machine capable of uniting the Confederate community and leading it to ultimate victory" ... The first evidence of an attempt to take over the SCV came in early 2002, when it emerged that Lyons -- a white supremacist attorney married on the grounds of the Aryan Nations by its neo-Nazi leader, Richard Butler -- was running for a regional leadership position within the SCV ... Since his 2004 election, Sweeney has moved to consolidate power by appointing to key leadership positions men who have belonged to hate groups or have histories of racism ... As chief of staff, Sweeney selected Ronald Casteel, who has been a member of the neo-secessionist League of the South (LOS), a racist hate group that opposes interracial marriage and whose leaders have defended both segregation and slavery (Casteel's license plate holder reads "SCV-LOS"). Sweeney's appointed historian in chief is Charles Kelley Barrow, who also has been a member of the LOS. As chaplain in chief, Sweeney named H. Rondel Rumberg, who has been a member of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC). The CCC, descended from the infamous White Citizens Councils, has called blacks "a retrograde species of humanity" and lamented that non-white immigration is turning the U.S. population into a "slimy brown mass of glop" ... In November, matters came to a head when Sweeney traveled to San Diego to address the annual convention of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) ... In January, H.K. Edgerton, a black Lyons ally who has said slavery was a good thing for Africans, killed off any residual good will when he sent out an E-mail listing the UDC among those most responsible for "Southern Cultural Genocide" ... http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?pid=1029
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?pid=1027

[struggle4progress]

7. Atheists in office: Déjà vu all over again (Herb Silverman)

I'm reminded of my South Carolina experience when I hear that some folks in Asheville, North Carolina want to remove Cecil Bothwell from City Council. What he and I have in common is not just that we are atheists, but that we are open about it. The constitutions of both North and South Carolina bar atheists from holding public office.

I first heard about the South Carolina exclusion in 1990. I'm no constitutional scholar, but I knew that Article 6 of our U.S. Constitution explicitly states that there may be no religious tests for public office. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1961 that this provision also applies to the states. So I assumed this was just an anachronism, and could easily be changed. I was wrong. I wound up to running for public office, first as a gubernatorial candidate and then as a notary public, in order to challenge this unconstitutional provision. It took eight years and a unanimous verdict of the South Carolina Supreme Court to state the obvious, that no religious test for public office may be applied, not even in South Carolina ...

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/herb_silverman/2009/12/atheists_in_office_deja_vu_all_over_again.html

[uberllama42]

9. FWIW, Silverman is wrong about Amendment VI

The Court did not rest its ruling in Torcaso on the "no religious test" provision in Article VI:

Appellant also claimed that the State's test oath requirement violates the provision of Art. VI of the Federal Constitution that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." Because we are reversing the judgment on other grounds, we find it unnecessary to consider appellant's contention that this provision applies to state as well as federal offices.

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=367&invol=488#f1

The decision in Torcaso merely held that a religious test denies equal protection of the law, so it is unconstitutional under Sec. 1 of Amendment XIV. It did not hold that the "no religious test" provision of Article VI was incorporated into Amendment XIV and applied to the states. I believe that, at the time of ratification of the federal constitution, there were multiple states with religious tests for state offices on their books. I don't know of any case law from that era supporting or undermining such tests.

[struggle4progress]

10. Torcaso cites Article VI as well as Amendments I and XIV, and I would read it as saying something

like: One certain effect of Amendment I is to strengthen Article VI, and since Amendment XIV clarifies that federal rights extend into the various states, we cannot escape finding Article VI applicable in this case