Nativity Scene Moved in Legal Dispute
About 200 Downey citizens, singing Christmas carols as they worked, set up a Christmas Nativity scene in a park behind Downey City Hall Saturday morning in response to a court order that the figures be removed from City Hall property.
Msgr. John Young of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church said the group gathered at 9:30 a.m. to move the 20-piece Nativity scene from a City Hall storage area to the park.
City employees last week set up the 20-piece scene on the lawn in front of City Hall after a private citizens’ group raised $3,600 to purchase the set. The group donated the figures after an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union threatened the city with a lawsuit if council members went ahead with a plan to use city money to buy the Nativity scene.
ACLU attorneys successfully argued to a Los Angeles Superior Court judge late Friday afternoon that the City Hall location and city assistance with setting up the figures represented government endorsement of a particular religious view, in violation of the constitutional separation of church and state.
ACLU assistant legal director Gary Williams said Saturday that the new location would be acceptable.
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