Plant City, FL – The Plant City Living Center has told Peggy Arnold, an 85-year-old grandmother, that she and the rest of the residents are not allowed to display any religious words or items associated with Christmas in the common area of their apartment buildings. Ms. Arnold contacted The American Family Association for help, and AFA alerted its grassroots membership and Liberty Counsel. The Center apparently relied on bad advice in a memo from an outside organization, which states in part:

Christmas Trees, Hanukkah Menorahs, Santa Claus, Season’s Greetings, snowmen, and wreaths are all acceptable icons that are associated with Christmas… Any religious symbols or religious words associated with Christmas should not be used. For example, the following items should not be on display: nativity scenes, the Star of David, angels, etc. This means no angel on your Christmas tree either… This decorating information applies to all common areas, including but not limited to: hallways, offices, community rooms, entrances, etc…. If your community does something like this, it must be open to all residents and be made widely known that all residents regardless of religious affiliation are invited to attend. To be on the safe side you can always call them “Holiday” parties.

Under the federal law known as The Fair Housing Act, residents at the facility cannot be discriminated against on the basis of religion, which includes the posting of holiday decorations. Christmas is a nationally recognized holiday. To ban religious decorations or celebrations in a federally subsidized or managed residential facility violates the Fair Housing Act and other federal laws.

Liberty Counsel has issued a letter to the facility setting forth the correct law and has offered pro bono legal representation to make sure the facility permits Christmas decorations. This outside organization, which issued the memo upon which the Center relied, did the same thing last year to another similar facility. Liberty Counsel intervened in those cases and contacted The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which contacted the director of the facility and advised that the federal law did not prohibit religious decorations. In fact, banning religious Christmas decorations would violate federal law.

Mathew D. Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel and Dean of Liberty University School of Law, remarked about this situation: “It is unconscionable to tell senior citizens living in residential care facilities that they cannot celebrate Christmas. How absurd it is to remove angels from Christmas trees and to ban religious words from a legal holiday named after Christ. Sometimes the war against Christmas ignites because there are people who dislike the religious holiday, and sometimes the war against Christmas is born out of outright stupidity. In this case, the censorship was instigated by an organization when it sent a memo to senior living facilities directing them to censor Christmas.”

Read the memo on our web site, www.LC.org.