A school district in America has yielded to a demand by a group of atheists to remove a Ten Commandments monument in one of the schools under its jurisdiction.
Moreover, the New Kensington-Arnold School District in Pennsylvania will even pay $163,500 in legal fees, including over $40,000 payable to the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) atheist organisation, Christian News reported.
"In order to take the high road, as they say, we compromised and agreed to remove the monument," New Kensington-Arnold School District Superintendent John Pallone said in defence of the school district's decision.
Commenting on this, Fox News & Commentary host Todd Starnes said what the school district did was "hardly a compromise" and "more like appeasement."
In his statement to the press, Pallone said the district decided to surrender to the demand of the FFRF even though it "had a winnable case."
"We're in a position where we just can't continue to fight this distraction," he said.
Pallone even acknowledged that the "opportunist" FFRF lawyers "made a mockery of the judicial system" by forcing "the district into a situation where we had to make this decision," according to Christian News.
Starnes said the school district's response was "infuriating" since it "chose to throw in the towel – for the sake of expedience" even though it "had an opportunity to demonstrate to children how to defend our rights under the Constitution."
"And in doing so – the school district violated an eleventh commandment: Thou Shall Not Tucketh Tail and Run," the conservative commentator said.
The case stemmed from a lawsuit filed in 2012 by self-avowed atheist Marie Schaub.
Schaub claimed the six-foot stone monument erected outside Valley High School in New Kensington, Pennsylvania was a religious symbol and therefore was in violation of the U.S. Constitution. She also complained that the presence of the monument disturbed her and her daughter.
In July 2015, U.S. District Judge Terrence McVerry rejected the claim, saying Schaub "failed to establish that they were forced to come into 'direct, regular, and unwelcome contact' with the Ten Commandments monument..."
However, the FFRF appealed the ruling to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which overturned McVerry's ruling, saying that Schaub did have a case as removing her daughter from the school to avoid seeing the monument constituted injury.
