The city of Groveport, Ohio reportedly banned the sale of “faith-based” items during its annual Apple Butter Day festival this year.
Following the incident, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) notified the city that the First Amendment protected the sellers expression of religious and nonreligious views.
“The Supreme Court has addressed this sort of scenario more than once. In Rosenberger v. Rector & Visitors of the University of Virginia, the court held that a public university violated the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech by denying a religious student magazine access to the same funding resources made available to secular student-run publications,” the foundation said in a letter to the city.
“As the court stated, the ‘government must abstain from regulating speech when the specific motivating ideology or the opinion or perspective of the speaker is the rationale for the restriction,'” FIRE reported.
FIRE said, “To Groveport’s credit, the city’s law director called FIRE today and confirmed the city will allow the sale of faith-based items at tomorrow’s festival. The city also reached out to Jake Seabaugh, as well as a church and a religious organization that had previously reserved booths at Apple Butter Day, to notify them of the policy change. Although the application deadline has passed, the city will allow these groups to vend at the festival tomorrow if they so choose. The law director also confirmed the city will initiate a formal review of the vendor policy, including the other unconstitutional restriction on ‘socially offensive language.’”
From The Gateway Pundit:
City officials initially called for the ban by claiming it was needed to avoid “endorsing” religion. But that reflected a fundamental misunderstanding of the First Amendment, the foundation explained. “The Supreme Court most recently reaffirmed this principle in Shurtleff v. City of Boston. There, the court held that Boston violated the First Amendment when it denied the plaintiff permission to fly the Christian flag on a city plaza, as the city regularly allowed other outside groups to hold ceremonies and events at the plaza where they could fly flags of their choosing on city flagpoles,” the foundation reported.
