{"id":1080,"date":"2008-11-21T17:03:35","date_gmt":"2008-11-21T17:03:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2008\/11\/court-orders-arizona-to-allow.php"},"modified":"2008-11-21T17:03:35","modified_gmt":"2008-11-21T17:03:35","slug":"court-orders-arizona-to-allow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/11\/court-orders-arizona-to-allow","title":{"rendered":"Court Orders Arizona to Allow &#8216;Choose Life&#8217; License Plates"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON (RNS) A federal court has ruled that the Arizona License Plate Commission must approve an anti-abortion group&#8217;s &#8220;Choose Life&#8221;<br \/>\nspecialty license plate.<br \/>\nThe Arizona Life Coalition applied for the specialty license plate in 2002, but the Arizona License Plate Commission, which oversees the requests, rejected its application.<br \/>\nAttorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) and the Center for Arizona Policy filed a suit in September of 2003.<br \/>\n&#8220;Pro-life groups shouldn&#8217;t be discriminated against for expressing their beliefs,&#8221; ADF senior counsel Gary McCaleb said.<br \/>\nLast January, the 9th U.S Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the commission had violated the Arizona Life Coalition&#8217;s First Amendment right to free speech by rejecting its application. The commission appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the decision, but the high court refused to hear the case.<br \/>\nIn a decision issued Wednesday (Nov. 19) U.S. District Judge Paul G.<br \/>\nRosenblatt ordered the commission to convene by Jan. 23 and approved the license plates.<br \/>\n&#8220;Many other groups have been allowed to participate in the Arizona specialty plate program. The commission had no legitimate reason to selectively exclude this group,&#8221; McCaleb said. &#8220;We&#8217;re pleased that the plates will soon be available to the public.&#8221;<br \/>\nThe &#8220;Choose Life&#8221; license plates are available in at least 19 states, according to Choose Life, Inc., a Florida-based non-profit that waged a six-year legal battle to make Florida the first state to offer the plates.<br \/>\nSouth Carolina, which offers a &#8220;Choose Life&#8221; plate, will soon start making &#8220;I Believe&#8221; license plates that feature a cross and stained glass window. Those plates are already the subject of a legal challenge by Jewish and Hindu groups.<br \/>\n<em>By Ashley Gipson<br \/>\nCopyright 2008 Religion News Service.  All rights reserved.  No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON (RNS) A federal court has ruled that the Arizona License Plate Commission must approve an anti-abortion group&#8217;s &#8220;Choose Life&#8221; specialty license plate. The Arizona Life Coalition applied for the specialty license plate in 2002, but the Arizona License Plate Commission, which oversees the requests, rejected its application. Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF)&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Court Orders Arizona to Allow &#039;Choose Life&#039; License Plates<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/11\/court-orders-arizona-to-allow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Court Orders Arizona to Allow &#039;Choose Life&#039; License Plates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"WASHINGTON (RNS) A federal court has ruled that the Arizona License Plate Commission must approve an anti-abortion group&#8217;s &#8220;Choose Life&#8221; specialty license plate. The Arizona Life Coalition applied for the specialty license plate in 2002, but the Arizona License Plate Commission, which oversees the requests, rejected its application. Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF)&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/11\/court-orders-arizona-to-allow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-11-21T17:03:35+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"nsymmonds\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Court Orders Arizona to Allow 'Choose Life' License Plates","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/11\/court-orders-arizona-to-allow","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Court Orders Arizona to Allow 'Choose Life' License Plates","og_description":"WASHINGTON (RNS) A federal court has ruled that the Arizona License Plate Commission must approve an anti-abortion group&#8217;s &#8220;Choose Life&#8221; specialty license plate. The Arizona Life Coalition applied for the specialty license plate in 2002, but the Arizona License Plate Commission, which oversees the requests, rejected its application. Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF)&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/11\/court-orders-arizona-to-allow","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2008-11-21T17:03:35+00:00","author":"nsymmonds","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/11\/court-orders-arizona-to-allow","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/11\/court-orders-arizona-to-allow","name":"Court Orders Arizona to Allow 'Choose Life' License Plates","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-11-21T17:03:35+00:00","dateModified":"2008-11-21T17:03:35+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/11\/court-orders-arizona-to-allow#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/11\/court-orders-arizona-to-allow"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/11\/court-orders-arizona-to-allow#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Court Orders Arizona to Allow &#8216;Choose Life&#8217; License Plates"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2","name":"nsymmonds","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","caption":"nsymmonds"},"description":"Nicole Symmonds is Beliefnet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Prayer editor and also covers Christianity. A New Yorker by birth but a Floridian by tenure, Nicole graduated from Florida A&M University with a B.S. in Public Relations and a minor in Sociology. She moved to NY to pursue a career in journalism which started at In Style magazine. There she learned the ropes of magazine reporting, researching, and writing\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand became exponentially more stylish. But what seemed like a deep interest in fashion and entertainment would soon be revealed as merely the vehicle that moved her closer to discovering her purpose, writing and covering matters of the Christian faith. While in her purpose-driven vehicle she can be found traveling between Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens for life, work and worship, respectively. From fashion to faith and the journey isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t over yet\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/nsymmonds"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1080\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}