Judge: Ky. can’t legislate dependence on God
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – It is one thing to trust in God, but quite another to be ordered to rely on protection from above during national emergencies, a judge has ruled.
Franklin Circuit Judge Thomas Wingate said in Wednesday’s decision that references to a dependence on “Almighty God” in the law that created the Kentucky Office of Homeland Security is akin to establishing a religion, which the government is prohibited from doing in the U.S. and Kentucky constitutions. Ten Kentucky residents and a national atheist group sued to have the reference stricken.
The judge wrote in the 18-page ruling: “The statute pronounces very plainly that current citizens of the Commonwealth cannot be safe, neither now, nor in the future, without the aid of Almighty God. Even assuming that most of this nation’s citizens have historically depended upon God, by choice, for their protection, this does not give the General Assembly the right to force citizens to do so now.”
