Alabama Town Gives Small Time Offenders Choice of Church or Jail

[Duct Tape]

This week, the Alabama town of Bay Minette will implement a bizarre and unconstitutional way of keeping minor offenders in check — go to church or go to jail:


Operation Restore Our Community or “ROC”…begins next week. The city judge will either let misdemenor offenders work off their sentences in jail and pay a fine or go to church every Sunday for a year.

If offenders elect church, they’re allowed to pick the place of worship, but must check in weekly with the pastor and the police department. If the one-year church attendance program is completed successfully, the offender’s case will be dismissed.


This program isn’t just unconstitutional, it is unconstitutional even under conservative Justice Antonin Scalia’s vision of the Constitution’s Establishment Clause. In his dissenting opinion in Lee v. Weisman, Scalia wrote that the state may not us the “threat of penalty” to “coerce anyone to support or participate in religion or its exercise.” Telling someone — even someone convicted of a crime — that they must participate in a religious service or go to jail clearly fails Justice Scalia’s test.

Indeed, as conservative law Professor Eugene Volokh points out, religiously compelled church attendance is so clearly and obviously unconstitutional, that the Mississippi Supreme Court held that a “judge’s decision to order people to attend church as a condition of bail is not just unconstitutional, but merits a 30-day suspension from the bench.” Again, this was in Mississippi.
Just across the border in Alabama, however, one town apparently thinks that the Constitution no longer applies.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/09/26/328180/go-to-church-or-go-to-jail/

[COLGATE4]

1. No - ALL of Alabama thinks the Constitution no longer applies

[treestar]

2. Wow that's bizarre

What's an atheist to do?

[RebelOne]

3. Go to church and pretend to be a believer.

At least, that will keep you out of jail.

[Duct Tape]

4. I was thinking the same thing

I'm an atheist myself. I guess I'd be screwed.

[Control-Z]

5. Thank gawd they offer jail time.

That's what I'd choose. There is not a chance I would be forced into church for a day let alone an entire year. Makes me cringe just thinking about it.

[Leftist Agitator]

6. I'd go to church...

As long as I could worship Raptor Jesus while being forced to attend.

[saras]

7. The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster was CREATED FOR THIS MOMENT.

[4_TN_TITANS]

8. You mean there's a difference?

At least to me there's not.

[Lyric]

9. I wonder how the judge would react if a Pagan told him

that his "church" is right in his own backyard.

[MountainLaurel]

10. What if they already go to church?

Do they have to switch because obviously the first one didn't take?

[Ishoutandscream2]

11. A whole year of Sundays to church? Give me some jail time

No freakin' way!