Baxter County fights lawsuit over exclusion of humanists from courthouse Christmas display

The answer by private Little Rock lawyers Jason Owens and Michael Rainwater for County Judge Mickey Pendergrass and other defendants throws the kitchen sink at the lawsuit. Their arguments:

The Humanist Association has no standing. The display doesn't belong to the county (it's erected each year by lawyer Rick Spencer, but the county owns the land on which it stands). The humanists waited too late, until the 2014 holiday season had begun, to request a display of their own "to create disorder." (Not a lot of prep would have been necessary to put up a banner.) Religious displays are allowed constitutionally so long as a reasonable (their emphasis)observer would conclude it was not meant to promote religion. The county passed a resolution meant to put a larger gloss on the event and leased the land so it would not be public land for purposes of the display. (Could they not also lease a square foot or so to the Humanists and similarly adopt a resolution touting a "legacy of freedom" in permitting such a display?) The county has a legitimate secular interest in having the holiday display, to encourage visitors to town to spend money.

Finally, says Baxter County, try again next year. The message, however, seems to hint that the Humanists will be denied and face having to go to court again, perhaps in hope of getting equal treatment under the U.S. Constitution by 2016. Said the answer:

In other words, Baxter County plans massive resistance, at whatever legal cost, to adding a very modest alternative message to a holiday display currently limited to a single religion. OK, it's true. A Santa and Christmas tree have been thrown in to secularize the display a touch.

I still believe odds are strong for an outcome like that ordered by federal Judge Susan Webber Wright, a stalwart Republican, in the case of the attempt by the state to allow only a privately owned Nativity on a patch of state Capitol ground while denying a winter solstice display by free thinkers. The battle for a Christian monopoly Capitol holiday displays was lost.

Here's the full document.

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Baxter County fights lawsuit over exclusion of humanists from courthouse Christmas display