Broad Becket Fund victory in Chicago Park District "buy a brick" case

Apr 29, 2004

April 29, 2004

Broad Becket Fund victory in Chicago Park District "buy a brick" case
Tongs will get brick that says "Jesus is the cornerstone"

Robert and Mildred Tong today won a decisive victory in their battle to "buy a brick" in a Chicago park near their home that says "Jesus is the Cornerstone." U.S. District Judge Ruben Castillo issued a broad and emphatically worded opinion and order in Robert Tong and Mildred Tong v. Chicago Park District in which he held that the Tongs were victims of "unlawful viewpoint discrimination in violation of the Tong's First Amendment rights."

The case began in 2002, when the Tongs responded to a flyer inviting area residents to "buy a brick" to help raise money for a new playground at Senn Park. Donors were to be permitted to specify a message of up to three lines to be inscribed on the bricks. The Tongs donated $50, and submitted as their message, "Missy, EB and Baby: Jesus is the Cornerstone. Love, Mom and Dad." But in March 2003, they received a letter from Chicago Park District (CPD) Attorney Nelson Brown, informing them that their message was being rejected because of its religious nature. The Tongs objected, but the CPD refused to change its position, and on July 22, 2003, The Becket Fund filed a federal lawsuit on the Tong's behalf against the Chicago Park Authority.

Judge Castillo found that "the CPD's refusal to accept the Tong's brick based on its religious expression violated the Free Speech Clause," and that excluding their message "amounted to viewpoint discrimination."

The court also found that "The Senn Park buy-a-brick program illuminates the CPD's lack of any coherent procedure for reviewing a proposed engraving," and that "the record is replete with examples of the CPD's confusion." He ordered the Park District to include a brick in the Senn Park walkway with the Tong's original inscription. "While we recognize the difficulty the Chicago Park District faced in creating substantive guidelines that would provide community members with incentives to donate to buy-a-brick programs," the judge concluded, "the government cannot broadly invite the public to express something of importance to them and then exclude such an expression because of its religious viewpoint."

Becket Fund Litigation Director Roman Storzer called the decision "an extremely important victory for the Tongs and for the First Amendment. And most of all, it is a decisive moment in the battle against absurd public policies aimed at extinguishing even the mere mention of religion in the public square."

Relevant Cases

• Robert and Mildred Tong v. Chicago Park District, et al.