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Crosses to be removed from police chaplain badges

By Karen Dorn Steele
Staff writer
December 5, 2007

Crosses will be removed from badges worn by Spokane Police chaplains under terms of an out-of-court settlement between the city and a former Lutheran pastor-turned-atheist who sued over the government agency’s use of the insignias and Christian prayers.

Additionally, lawyers from the Center for Justice who represented former pastor Ray Ideus will get $1,000.

“It’s a milestone,” said Ideus, who volunteers eight hours a week with the police department. “It’s very important that they’ll have to take that cross off. It’s not a Christian police department. The chaplains have to minister to all faiths – and non-faiths,” Ideus said.

The chaplains’ badges previously contained the city of Spokane seal and a Christian/Latin cross. Spokane Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick informed the Spokane City Council of the settlement in a report to the council Monday night.

Ideus, 75, said Tuesday he’s happy about the settlement of his lawsuit, filed in January 2006 in U.S. District Court in Spokane.

His lawsuit claimed that the police department’s use of the Christian cross is an “impermissible incorporation of a particular religious symbol in a government insignia.”

Assistant City Attorney Rocky Treppiedi countersued Ideus for filing a lawsuit that he considered “false, and unfounded, malicious and without probable cause.” Treppiedi’s action was part of a controversial past practice of countersuing civil rights plaintiffs that has been curtailed by the city’s new chief lawyer, Jim Craven. The countersuit, along with the rest of the federal litigation, will be dismissed.

The settlement is a recognition by the city that its chaplains and volunteer chaplains need to be accepted by all faith groups, said John Sklut, the Center for Justice attorney who handled the case.

“There are some in the community who saw the suit as anti-Christian, and that’s an unfortunate perception. The language that’s now in place between the city and the chaplaincy board is a recognition and appreciation of all faith groups,” Sklut said.

City Councilwoman Nancy McLaughlin disagreed, calling the legal settlement “an attack on Christianity.” She said the city’s legal department had not briefed the City Council on the case when settlement talks were under way this fall.

“I didn’t realize this was going on. When people are intimidated into removing religious symbols, it’s not good for our country. I was amazed there was not more attention paid to it,” McLaughlin said.

The $1,000 that the city will pay to the Center for Justice relates to the center’s public records request for documents related to the chaplaincy program.

In its response, the city forwarded a 1995 document that stated that all police chaplains “must adhere to the Judeo-Christian ethic,” but the city later said that wasn’t its official policy, Sklut said.

The payment “is a recognition that the center reasonably relied on those documents as the basis for the lawsuit,” Sklut said.

The city will accept police chaplains and volunteer chaplains from any faith or non-faith group, and any uniform patches “shall not reflect any particular religious belief or serve to promote a specific religion,” the settlement says.

However, chaplains will be allowed to wear lapel pins with crosses, stars of David or other insignia to express personal religious preferences, Kirkpatrick told the City Council.

Ideus was a Lutheran pastor for 30 years before he became an atheist. He and his wife, Lorraine, moved to Spokane from Kansas in 2003.

Karen Dorn Steele can be reached at 459-5462 or karend@spokesman.com.

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