TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) - An email sent by a Kansas Corporation Commission employee referencing his religious beliefs may have exposed the agency and state to legal liability, according to civil liberties experts.
Jared Bowes, a media specialist in the KCC’s public affairs and consumer protection division, first tried to put a veiled reference to Jesus into the commission’s December newsletter, but it was edited out. Bowes then used his state-issued email address to send a message to his colleagues.
“Let me be forthright in saying that my sole intent was to extol King Jesus as the ’reason for the season,’” Bowes wrote in the email sent New Year’s Eve and obtained by The Topeka Capital Journal (https://bit.ly/1m1eDLG ) through an open records request.
KCC spokesman Jesse Borjon declined comment, saying it was a personnel matter.
“I had every intention to be thought-provoking by alluding to Jesus in my original submission,” Bowes wrote. “Why? Because that’s what Christmas is all about. Christ. The Risen Savior. Born into this world to lay down his life as a ransom for man’s sin.”
Doug Bonney, legal director for the ACLU Foundation of Kansas, said the email may be problematic for the KCC and the state.
“Certainly individual employees of the government have the free exercise right to have their own beliefs, adhere to them and do things like have a Bible on their desk or a cross or a Star of David or wear a yarmulke, or whatever you want,” Bonney said. “But when you circulate this kind of a statement, it’s basically pushing your religion in an official way by using the state email system, and that’s the problem.”
Vickie Standell Stangl, president of the Great Plains Chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said Bowes was “wrong from the start” for trying to insert an allusion to Jesus in the agency newsletter.
She said he “further compounded the problem with his long memo stating he wanted to stand up and talk about the real meaning of Christmas to state employees.”
“While he has every right to believe in Christ, and celebrate Christmas according to his beliefs, he does not have the right to use his taxpayer funded office, which includes people of all faiths as well as non-religious individuals, to lecture them about the Savior and the true meaning of Christmas on state time, with state property,” she said in a statement.
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Information from: The Topeka (Kan.) Capital-Journal, https://www.cjonline.com
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