School officials sometimes take unusual steps to avoid First Amendment Establishment Clause problems. So it was in Keller, Texas this year according to today's Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Producers of the Liberty Elementary School 2005-06 yearbook decided to put an enlarged picture of a U.S. nickel on the yearbook's cover. The choice had some logic to it. This was Liberty Elementary's first year, and the new U.S. nickel has the word "Liberty" in its design. But then the school's principal and the PTA board concluded that having the nickel's "In God We Trust" motto prominently displayed "might create an issue with people of several religious faiths". But instead of finding another image for the cover, the school produced the yearbooks with a photo of the nickel that does not include the motto. Then, to further complicate matters, the school included with the yearbooks a sticker that families could use to restore "In God We Trust" to the coin on the book's cover.
Not surprisingly, the school has received some 300 e-mails complaining about the removal of the motto in the first place. Frank Manion, senior lawyer with evangelist Pat Robertson's American Center for Law and Justice, commenting on the school's First Amendment concerns said, "I understand completely that there are areas of this that are nebulous. This isn't one of them." However a Dallas ACLU lawyers said he thought the school had made the correct decision.
