Park playground's brick pavers lead to suit against state

A community fund-raising effort for a new playground at St. Edward State Park in Kenmore is at the center of a dispute over freedom of speech and the separation of church and state.

The American Center for Law and Justice, based in Washington, D.C., sued the state yesterday for what it says is an unconstitutional infringement of the rights of a couple who paid $100 to have a commemorative brick paver placed at the playground.

The issue arose when Lynnwood residents Dan and Olga Buchanan paid for their paver and requested that it say, "Thank you Jesus, Daria & Evan Buchanan." Dan and Olga Buchanan could not be reached for comment and the relationship between Dan and Olga and Daria and Evan wasn't immediately known.

When the Buchanans looked for their finished paver at the playground, they discovered that it read only "Daria & Evan Buchanan."

"The brick was put in without their permission or their being informed," said ACLJ attorney Stuart Roth, who's representing the Buchanans. He contends that the pavers and their messages constitute a public forum that cannot be censored by the state or anyone else.

In the Buchanans' case, the suit says the censoring was done by Colleen Ponto, coordinator of the fund-raising program. In a letter to the Buchanans in August, she wrote that "Because the Saint Edward State Park playground is on public land, our intent and unwritten policy for all of the 511 bricks sold was to engrave only nonreligious requests in order to uphold the separation of church and state as dictated by our state constitution."

Some of the bricks do, however, have religious content. Among them are "Arlene Jensen, Our Angel in Heaven" and "God Loves All Children, Parker & Baylee Hall."

Ponto said yesterday she had neither seen nor heard of the lawsuit, and had nothing further to add. The same was true for state parks officials in Olympia; spokeswoman Virginia Painter said no one there had been served with any papers in the suit.

The St. Edward pavers are not the first to trip up a community over religious content. A similar fund-raising effort for the Redmond Library was abandoned a year ago when religious messages on bricks, such as "God Can Change Life," sparked an anti-religious backlash. One brick, for example, said, "God Kills Babies."

Those messages were not censored because the King County Library System considered the library grounds to be a public forum, and the system could not restrict speech there.

In their suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle, the Buchanans ask that the policy employed at St. Edward State Park be declared invalid and that they be awarded $1 in damages plus attorneys' fees.

And they want their brick installed as requested.

Jon Savelle: 206-464-3192