ADF attorney available to media after hearing over religious displays at private Conn. postal store
ADF attorneys appeal rulings after patron successfully sues USPSThursday, March 19, 2009
WHO: ADF Senior Legal Counsel Jeff Shafer
WHAT: Available for media interviews after hearing in Cooper v. United States Postal Service
WHEN: Friday, March 20, immediately following hearing, which begins at 10 a.m. EDT
WHERE: U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse, 500 Pearl St., Ceremonial Courtroom, 9th Floor, Manhattan
NEW YORK — Alliance Defense Fund Senior Legal Counsel Jeff Shafer will be available for media interviews Friday following his oral arguments before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in Cooper v. United States Postal Service. Shafer will argue against federal district court judgments that declared religious displays in a church-run contract postal unit unconstitutional.
“Private Christian entities shouldn’t be censored for displaying information about their own religious ministries, on their own properties, simply because they participate in contracts with the government. The First Amendment does not call for that,” said Shafer. “The lower court clearly erred in ordering a religious cleansing of the church’s speech from its own facility.”
A customer, Bertram Cooper, sued the U.S. Postal Service and the Manchester, Conn., postmaster for allegedly violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Cooper argued that religious signs, literature, prayer cards, and other materials inside a contract provider store--privately owned and operated by the Full Gospel Interdenominational Church--constitutes a government endorsement of religion.
ADF attorneys filed a brief with the 2nd Circuit in February 2008, arguing that a federal district court in Connecticut should not have ruled that the church-owned postal store, named Sincerely Yours, Inc., is a government entity, but rather a private entity. The USPS awarded the store a contract to sell postal services to the local community in 2001. The USPS commonly awards such contracts to spare the government the expense and responsibility of maintaining a facility and staff of its own and to allow a greater geographic distribution of locations from which postal services may be purchased.
Sincerely Yours has operated since 2002 as a private business on its own private property, with signs and other indicators in several locations throughout its facility informing patrons the store is a contract postal unit operated by a church. On the counter is a sign bearing the USPS official logo, which reads, “The United States Postal Service does not endorse the religious viewpoint expressed in the material posted at this Contract Postal Unit.”
ADF-allied attorney Joseph Secola of Brookfield, Conn., is local counsel in the lawsuit.
- Appellate brief filed by ADF attorneys in the lawsuit
- Fact sheet on the lawsuit
