Atheist lawyer and physician Michael Newdow says he won't appeal a ruling Thursday that rejected his request for an injunction that would have prevented inclusion of the words "so help me God" in the presidential oath of office administered by Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. to Barack Obama next Tuesday.
U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton, in an oral ruling Thursday, said he did not have the authority to keep Obama from using the words. Obama says he, like numerous past presidents, wants to add the words which are not included in the oath as it appears in the Constitution. Walton also said he could not tell Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. to refrain from prompting Obama to use the words as he administers the oath, according to this AP report.
"I won't stop it for this inaugural, but hopefully the next one," Newdow told Legal Times this afternoon. While he won't appeal the denial of the injunction, Newdow said he will appeal the ruling on the merits of his claim that Roberts' prompting of Obama to add "so help me God" to the oath amounts to violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Newdow did not object to Obama, unprompted, adding the words himself.
The Presidential Inaugural Committee's lawyer in the case, Craig Hoover of Hogan & Hartson in D.C., said the committee was pleased by Walton's ruling. Hoover had argued that Newdow and other plaintiffs had no standing to challenge the oath, and that the committee was not a governmental entity subject to the restrictions of the First Amendment.
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