Tag Archives: ZZ: Byrne v. Rutledge

OneNewsNow: “‘The state said, “No — we don’t allow religion or a deity on our vanity plates” and denied the request,’ recaps Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) attorney [Jeremy Tedesco]. ‘So we litigated the case, and after five years, we won at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. After the district court ruled against us, the Second Circuit said that Mr. Byrne needs to be granted equal access to the vanity plate forum for his religious speech.’”

Washington Examiner (AP): “The state of Vermont has ended a years-long legal dispute with a man who has been fighting for the right to display a reference to one of the Bible’s most famous passages on a vanity plate . . . ‘This really is a great victory for free speech,’ said [Jeremy Tedesco], the general council for the Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund, which represented Byrne.”

Associated Press: “A Vermont man will be able to get a license plate that refers to a famous passage from the Bible’s New Testament.”

ADF attorney Matthew Sharp writing at Townhall: “[T]he recent ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in Byrne v. Rutledge, a lawsuit wrapped up Monday, assures us that no matter how short the message or the viewpoint it expresses, it is protected by the First Amendment . . . Shawn Byrne applied to the Vermont DMV for the tag ‘JN36TN,’ a creative reference to the popular Bible verse, John 3:16. But Vermont denied his request, citing a state law prohibiting vanity plates that reference religion or deity.”

NorthJersey.com: “‘Christians shouldn’t be censored from expressing their beliefs while others are freely allowed to express theirs,’ said David Cortman, senior counsel at the Alliance Defense Fund, which filed the suit in 2005.”

BeliefNet.com: “Shawn Byrne of West Rutland applied for a personalized license plate with the letters and numbers “JN36TN” referring to the Bible verse John 3:16. A month later, the DMV denied his application because the message was “deemed to be a combination that refers to deity,” according to a statement from the Alliance Defense Fund, which filed suit on behalf of Byrne in 2005.”

Andrew Cohen writes at Politics Daily: “Judge Livingston then delivered the coup de grace. “The infirmities in Vermont’s application of its own statute are amply demonstrated by the case at bar. Byrne applied for the plate JN36TN, which the state refused to issue because Byrne’s supplied meaning indicated his intent to refer to the biblical passage John 3:16. However, as Byrne argues, and the record supports, Vermont would have approved that very same combination had Byrne supplied a secular meaning for it – e.g., `[M]y name is John, I am 36, [and] I was born in Tennessee.’”

ADF attorney Jeremy Tedesco on the Zeb Bell Show to discuss the recent 2nd Circuit victory in the Vermont John 3:16 license plate litigation. | MP3 audio 13:41 mins

National Law Journal on Law.com: “A state law that prohibits vanity license plates containing religious messages violates the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday. The 2nd Circuit said a Vermont statute that barred a driver from obtaining a vanity plate referring to the Biblical verse . . . Jeremy D. Tedesco of the Alliance Defense Fund in Scottsdale, Arizona argued for Byrne.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit issued a ruling Friday that strikes down a Vermont motor vehicles statute that prohibits personalized license plates with messages that refer to “religion” or “deity.”