American Humanist Association Joins Amicus Brief in Fitzmaurice v. City of Quincy Challenging Catholic Saint Statues on Quincy, MA Government Building

The American Humanist Association has joined a coalition of 12 local and national faith and conscience organizations in filing an amicus brief before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in Fitzmaurice v. City of Quincy. At issue is Mayor Thomas Koch's unilateral decision to spend $850,000 in taxpayer funds, without notice to the City Council or the public, commissioning two ten-foot bronze statues depicting Catholic Saints Michael and Florian as the sole adornments on the façade of the city's new public safety building. The Norfolk County Superior Court denied the City's motion to dismiss and granted a preliminary injunction blocking installation; the City, represented on appeal by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, now asks the Commonwealth's highest court to reverse.

The amicus brief argues that Article 3 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights requires government neutrality toward religion and nonreligion alike, and that adorning a public safety building exclusively with Catholic saint statues sends an unmistakable message to humanists, atheists, and all nonreligious and non-Catholic residents that they are outsiders to their own government. The brief further demonstrates that government favoritism toward a single religious tradition harms religious minorities and nonreligious people and may even weaken the favored religion itself. The AHA is joined by Bend the Arc, CAIR-Massachusetts, DignityUSA, Dignity Boston, the Global Justice Institute of the Metropolitan Community Church, the Hindu American Foundation, the Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action, the Methodist Federation for Social Action, the Sadhana Coalition, the Society for Humanistic Judaism, and the Unitarian Universalist Association.

A copy of the amicus brief can be found here.