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International Herald Tribune - June 22, 2007
North Carolina official will not appeal Quran
ruling affecting courtroom oaths
RALEIGH, North Carolina (June 22, 2007): North Carolina officials said today they will not challenge a judge's ruling that allows the Quran or any other religious text to be used to swear in witnesses or jurors in the state's courtrooms.
The ruling by Wake County Superior Court Judge Paul Ridgeway last month came after judges in another North Carolina county declined to accept donated copies of the Quran, saying that swearing an oath on anything other than the Bible violated state law. The American Civil Liberties Union sued, claiming that allowing oaths only on the Bible was unconstitutional because it favored Christianity over other religions.
The state had until Monday (June 25) to appeal Ridgeway's ruling, which came months after the issue rose to the national level when U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim to be elected to Congress, used a Quran when being sworn into office in January.
"The state is not going to appeal," Jennifer Canada, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Roy Cooper, said in an announcement hailed by the ACLU.
"We're very pleased, obviously. That's the right thing to do and that's what we hoped they would do," said Seth Cohen, an ACLU attorney who argued the case before Ridgeway.
In a letter this week, Democratic state Sen. Larry Shaw asked Cooper to not appeal the ruling "because we are sure to stray away from the pluralistic society and great ideas of our founding fathers."
Shaw, a Muslim who represents Cumberland County, also serves on the board of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a national Islamic advocacy group.
In June 2005, Muslims from Greensboro tried to donate copies of the Quran to Guilford County's two courthouses, but two judges declined the texts. The ACLU filed a lawsuit, which was dismissed as moot in December 2005 when a judge ruled no actual controversy existed at the time.
In January of this year, the ruling was reversed by an unanimous three-judge panel of the state Court of Appeals, after the ACLU added a Muslim woman as a plaintiff. Syidah Mateen said her request to place her hand on the Quran as a witness in a domestic violence case in Guilford County was denied in 2003.
Before filing its lawsuit, the ACLU joined CAIR in asking the state's court system to allow use of the Quran and other religious texts in courtrooms…..
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/06/22/america/NA-GEN-US-Quran-Courtroom.php
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