Judge says no to 'I Believe' plates; group says it will issue a version

One of the people who sued to stop the state from issuing the "I Believe" Christian license plate says he has no problem with a private group going through the process to get the DMV to make the plates.

A federal judged on Tuesday ruled that the license plates were unconstitutional because they were created by the state legislature, which meant the state was endorsing one religion. "I'm not a constitutional lawyer and you don't have to be to recognize that this was blatantly unconstitutional," says the Rev. Dr. Neal Jones, minister of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Columbia and one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

But he says of the Palmetto Family Council's plan to go through the normal process already in place to get a new specialty license plate, which would look exactly like the one ruled unconstitutional, is perfectly fine because it's being done by a private group. "And that way, the government is not giving its seal of endorsement to any religion, which is the way it should be. As a minister and as a religious person, I don't want the government meddling in my religion," he says.

Dr. Oran Smith, president of the Palmetto Family Council, already has on his desk the DMV application for a new specialty license plate. He says when lawmakers passed the "I Believe" plate law last year, the council thought it would probably be ruled unconstitutional so it registered the name "I Believe" as a chartered organization. "Our intention at this point, barring any problems that we see, is to move forward with a plate for the organization 'I Believe' that features a Christian cross and a stained glass window, or some similar design," he says.

He says the group will have no problem getting the required 400 pre-orders or $4,000 deposit required by the DMV.

Attorney General Henry McMaster says it's not his decision whether to appeal the federal judge's ruling because he was not a party in the lawsuit. The DMV was sued because it issues license plates and the Department of Corrections was sued because it makes the plates. The suit was filed by Rev. Jones, retired Methodist minister Rev. Thomas Summers of Columbia, Rabbi Sanford Marcus of Columbia, Rev. Robert Knight of Charleston, the Hindu American Foundation and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

McMaster says, "This license plate does not hurt anybody. There are over a hundred other types of specialty plates and nobody is made to have one."

He says activist federal judges have been moving the country further to the left, trying to remove religion completely from the public square.

But Rev. Jones says, "It's funny, some people think that those of us who brought the lawsuit are somehow anti-Christian or anti-religious. We're all ministers, so that's obviously not the case. We all stand for the Constitution because we stand for separation of church and state. And we have learned through history the hard way that, when you mix politics and religion, both democratic government and religion suffer."