Polk Law Blog

The City of Lakeland has filed a Motion to Dismiss the lawsuit filed against the City and Mayor Gow Fields. Read the document: Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss The argument is fairly straightforward and the motion is very well written. The City argues that the claims of the plaintiffs are moot because of the resolution passed [...]

The Atheists of Florida have amended their complaint in their lawsuit against the  City of Lakeland seeking to have the invocations conducted by the Lakeland City Commission held unconstitutional. Download Documents: First Amended Complaint and Verification Exhibit A – letter number 1 Exhibit B – letter number 2 Exhibit C – new invocation policy My previous [...]

The Ledger is reporting that the Lakeland City Commission has passed a resolution concerning their invocation policy. (UPDATE 8/3/2010: The Ledger has a more detailed article this morning.) The new policy is clearly designed to help the City get out of the recent lawsuit filed by the Atheists of Florida. You can read the draft [...]

A group called the Atheists of Florida announced that they have filed suit in U.S. District Court in Tampa against the City of Lakeland challenging the City’s current practice of having invocations before the start of its city commission meetings. The group posted a copy of the complaint on their website, but it is not signed and does [...]

Welcome to Part II! For the lazy, here’s the summary: The law is different here in Florida than in other places, the school board was on questionable legal grounds, the Lakeland City Commission is probably OK but could use some improvement, and we have definitely not seen the last legal development on this issue.