“Get out of San Francisco!”

Appeals court asked: Did San Francisco Board of Supervisors violate First Amendment when it adopted resolution bashing the Catholic Church?

Was the San Francisco Board of Supervisors constitutionally justified in passing an explicitly anti-Catholic resolution, adopted March 21, 2006, which labeled the Vatican a “foreign country” whose moral teachings are “hateful,” “insulting and callous,” and “insulting to all San Franciscans”?

Federal Judge: Catholic Church’s Position Against Homosexual Adoptions Justifies Government Hostility Towards Church

Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of the Law Center, observed, “Judge Patel clearly exhibited hostility toward the Catholic Church. During oral argument and in her written decision she claimed that the Church ‘provoked the debate’ by publicly expressing its moral teaching, and that by passing the resolution the City responded ‘responsibly’ to all of the ‘terrible’ things the Church was saying. This judge attempted to rationalize the evocative rhetoric and venom of the resolution which are sad reminders of Catholic baiting by the Ku Klux Klan.”