'Mezuzah case' puts judge in spotlight (Diane Wood seen as hostile to religion despite facts)

Diane Wood, a 7th Circuit Court of Appeals judge who served on the University of Chicago faculty with President Obama, will be watched closely during oral arguments Wednesday at the Dirksen Federal Building.

She has already come under attack from critics who say she is too liberal. “Judge Wood has betrayed a consistent hostility to religious litigants and religious interests,” the conservative Judicial Confirmation Network said in a statement Friday.

But Wood, at least in the mezuzah case, championed the religious litigants’ side. Last year, she stood up for the right of owners to post religious symbols, including observant Jews to post mezuzot (plural of mezuzah) and Christians to post crucifixes. She said Lynne Bloch, son Nathan and daughter Helen ought to be able to present a jury with evidence they were discriminated against by the board of the Shoreline Towers Condominium, 6301 N. Sheridan, when the board began removing the family’s mezuzah in 2004.

But the two more-conservative judges on the court, led by Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook, outvoted her then, ruling that Shoreline has the right to enforce its code against clutter, presuming it is religiously neutral; a crucifix, for example, would also be prohibited.

http://www.suntimes.com/lifestyles/religion/1566261,mezuzah-diane-wood-judge-050909.article

People who sit on association boards are generally people who have too much time on their hands, are on a misguided power trip, suffer from a "clipboard" mentality, and are twits. The same can be said about members of local school boards.

The association members in this case are twits who have not learned the meaning of "live and let live".

Too bad that cases caused by such 'twits' have to take the time of such courts.