Air Force Chaplains sued...again!

Air Force Veteran Files Federal Lawsuit to

Stop Religious Bias in the U.S. Air Force

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Rabinowitz/Dorf Communications

October 6, 2005

ALBUQUERQUE, Oct. 6— An Air Force veteran and United States Air Force Academy graduate today filed a federal lawsuit that seeks an immediate injunction to stop the U.S. Air Force from encouraging unconstitutional proselytizing of its members.

Mikey Weinstein, formerly Assistant General Counsel in the Reagan White House Office of Administration and currently an attorney and businessman living in Albuquerque, NM, has led a nearly two-year struggle to end evangelical religious bias at the United States Air Force Academy and to bring the Academy into compliance with Constitutional standards.

Today, Weinstein filed the lawsuit, Weinstein v. United States Air Force and Pete Geren, Acting Secretary of the Air Force, in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico.

“It is a shocking disgrace that I have been forced to go to federal court to stop the U.S. Air Force from violating fundamental precepts of the Constitution— the separation of church and state and the establishment of a national religion,” said Mikey Weinstein.

“It has been nearly three months since Brigadier General Cecil Richardson proclaimed that the Air Force will ‘reserve the right to evangelize the unchurched.’ The Air Force continues to drag its feet while Gen. Richardson, the deputy chief of all Air Force chaplains, sets patently unconstitutional policies,” said Weinstein, himself an honor graduate of the United States Air Force Academy who comes from a family of three generations of military academy graduates with a combined 115 years of active duty service. Weinstein has one son who is currently a cadet at the academy and another son and daughter-in-law, both academy graduates, are currently on active duty in the Air Force.

The lawsuit describes continued violations of the Establishment Clause by the Air Force Academy that are severe, systemic and pervasive, and have fostered discrimination and harassment toward non-Evangelical Christian, non-Christian and non-religious cadets and Academy staff.

The lawsuit also details a litany of abuses including the discrimination and harassment toward non-Christian and non-religious cadets.

“No member of the USAF, including a chaplain, is permitted to evangelize, proselytize, or in any related way attempt to involuntarily convert, pressure, exhort or persuade a fellow member of the USAF to accept their own religious beliefs while on duty,” the lawsuit states.

“The USAF is not permitted to establish or advance any one religion over another religion or one religion over no religion,” it says.

Weinstein is credited with reporting on widespread unconstitutional practices at the Air Force Academy.

“It is particularly egregious that the current leadership of the Pentagon fails miserably to see the myriad, inherent dangers of establishing a policy of evangelizing its ‘unchurched’ service members when we are in the midst of a bloody, foreign war where our enemy falsely seeks to portray and exploit us, one-dimensionally, as invading Christian crusaders,” Weinstein said.

“General Richardson, and by clear implication, his entire Department of Defense chain of command, have essentially declared war on the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution,” added Weinstein.

The lawsuit specifically seeks the prohibition of any member of the Air Force, including chaplains, from evangelizing, proselytizing or any related attempts to involuntarily convert, pressure, exhort or persuade a fellow member of the USAF to accept their own religious beliefs while on duty.

A response to the court from the Air Force is due within 20 days.