Supreme Court nixes review of nativity appeal

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that it will not review a case brought by a College Point woman, Andrea Skoros, to overturn a ban on nativity displays in schools. On Tuesday, February 20, the justices declined, without comment or recorded dissent, to hear an appeal in Skoros v. City of New York.
“I was very upset and disappointed, but not surprised,” said Skoros, the Catholic mom who charged that the ban was unconstitutional. “It seems like the reason the case was started was because there was unfairness towards Christianity and that’s how it is in our country today.”
In 2001, the New York City public school system enacted a policy banning religious symbols but not secular holiday ones, including Menorahs, the Islamic star and crescent, and Christmas trees.
“It doesn’t seem fair to me that they’ll allow the Menorah and the star and crescent, but not the nativity,” Skoros said, explaining why she began her push in 2002 to bring the nativity into schools after her son was asked to color a Menorah in class.
Skoros received a helping hand in her fight from the Catholic League, which paid all of the legal fees for the suit, and the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, MI represented her.
“It’s just a display. We are not asking them [the schools] to teach religion,” Skoros said of the lawsuit, which went before a federal district court and a divided three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, both of which sided with the schools.
In refusing to hear the case, the Supreme Court has essentially put an end to Skoros’ two-year long battle.
“Once the Supreme Court turns you down there’s not much else you can do,” she said.