A military court's stunning determination that it is qualified to decide whether or not a particular religious practice is "important" enough to be protected will be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
WND reported the Court of Appeals for the Armed Services ruling in a dispute prompted by the military's dismissal of a member who had posted an excerpt from a Bible verse, "No weapons formed against me shall prosper," at her work station and declined to take it down when a supervisor objected to the "tone."
The defense of Marine LCpl. Monifa Sterling was coordinated by First Liberty Institute.
The organization, and lawyer Paul Clement, who has argued dozens of cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, had sought affirmation that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act applied to the military.
"The court's majority decided it could strip a Marine of her constitutional rights just because it didn't think her beliefs were important enough to be protected," said Kelly Shackelford, president and CEO of First Liberty. "If they can court-martial a Marine over a Bible verse, what's to stop them from punishing service members for reading the Bible, talking about their faith, or praying?"
First Liberty's director of military affairs, Mike Berry, said there are two aims in the case – justice for Sterling and setting a precedent.
"Our Marines give up many freedoms when serving, but religious freedom is never one of them," Berry said. "The First Amendment, RFRA and military code all protect service members' right to express their faith freely."
So the organization announced Thursday it will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
"It's more important than ever for Americans to pay attention to Sterling's case now," Shackelford said, "for the sake of military members of faith, and for the sake of every American."
Berry added, "Even though the CAAF failed to right the wrong that was inflicted on Ms. Sterling, we hope that the U.S. Supreme Court will take her case and uphold her right to religious freedom, setting a clear precedent for all service members and their future expressions of faith within our military."
WND reported at the end of 2015 when a lower military court delivered the judgment against Sterling, who, at three places in her work space, posted a phrase from Isaiah 54:17, "No weapons formed against me shall prosper."
According to the brief, her supervisor said, "I don't like the tone" and told her to remove the verses.
"When Sterling declined, her supervisor took them down at the end of the duty day. Sterling reprinted and re-posted the messages, but she found them in the trash the next morning. She was then court-martialed," according to the complaint.
"No one in our military who goes to work every day to defend our freedoms should then be court-martialed for exercising those very freedoms," said Daniel Briggs, a former Air Force JAG officer now with the Alliance Defending Freedom, at the time.
"This case is about Monifa, but it is also about every American who puts on the uniform in service to this country. The question is whether they will be allowed to exercise their faith in the military, or whether they will be denied the same constitutionally protected freedoms they have volunteered to defend and are willing to die for."
The latest development, last week, was an affirmation by the Court of Appeals of the armed forces' punishment of Sterling.
"This is a real-life example of why judges shouldn't play theologians," said Daniel Blomberg, legal counsel of the Becket Fund, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting Sterling.
"Here, a few judges concluded that keeping scripture nearby isn't 'important,' even though more than half of the world's population belong to religions that teach the exact opposite. Avoiding obvious errors like this is why RFRA protects all religious beliefs, not just beliefs that government officials deem 'important.'"
The organization pointed out that Sterling's co-workers were permitted to keep nonreligious messages on their desks. And it argued her actions were protected by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
One judge on the military panel disagreed with the punishment, noting that federal law "does not empower judges to curtail various manifestations of sincere religious belief simply by arbitrarily deciding that a certain act was not 'important' to the believer's exercise of religion."