Howard Friedman, Religion Clause
In Cressman v. Thompson, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 68236 (WD OK, May 16, 2012), and Oklahoma federal district court rejected a claim by an Oklahoma driver that the picture on the state’s standard license plates compel him to express a message contrary to his religious beliefs. The plates carry the image of a statue of a Native American shooting an arrow into the sky. Plaintiff alleges that the image retells the story of a Native American who believed in multiple deities, the divinity of nature and the ability of humans to use sacred objects to convince gods to alter nature. The court concluded, however:
A reasonable viewer simply could not glean a religious message from the Native American image on the license plate or impute such to the driver. Observers of the image “are presented with a symbol that has various and somewhat imprecise ideas associated with it.” … They are not presented with a “particularized message” that is likely, much less highly likely to be “understood by those who view[] it.”