the OFL-1.1. license violates the Establishment Clause

[mbutterick]

Amendment I of the Constitution of the United States prohibits US gov’t acts that “respect[] an establishment of religion”. OFL-1.1 is shorthand for the full name, which is “SIL Open Font License Version 1.1”. According to its website, SIL is a “faith-based” organization. Linguists Lise Dobrin & Jeff Good describe SIL more specifically as a “Christian missionary organization” whose main work is “Bible translation”. The US gov’t should not be using this license, as it creates an explicit entanglement / endorsement of a religious organization.

[sixty4k]

IANAL, but I doubt that using a common public license asserts a relationship with the original authors of the license.

[evbarnett]

I am also not a lawyer, but I know this is not how the Establishment Clause works. By your logic, Catholic universities couldn't be accredited, religious non-profits couldn't be legal charities, etc., which is obviously not the case.

Using a license that was originally created by a 'faith-based organization' is not an endorsement of the author, organization, religion, or anything in particular.

[mbutterick]

The analogy to “Catholic universities” and “religious … legal charities” is inapt. At issue here is a US gov’t work. This work can only be used if one assents to a certain license. The license was created by a religious organization (SIL) and remains explicitly associated with that organization (their name and hyperlink appears in the license). The license is not incidental to SIL’s religious purpose.

As for a possibly more apt analogy, a long line of cases (e.g., Warner vs. Orange County and Inouye vs. Kemna) has held that gov’t-mandated participation in Alcoholics Anonymous violates the Establishment Clause, even though AA is not formally associated with a particular church or religion.

For reasons cited in #30, public-sans should be put into the public domain, which would cure this issue as well (because it would no longer be subject to any license)

[evbarnett]

Your comparison to AA is not relevant. AA was not allowed because AA's plan itself contains religious goals. If AA's plan did not contain this content, AA could have even been associated with a specific church and it would have been fine. In short, content and intent is what matters, not basic affiliation.

Regarding #30, I commented there too. I do not believe this is public domain, since the project is based on Libre Franklin. Libre Franklin holds the original rights, and Public Sans must adhere to their license. It would be a violation for the US government to declare that Libre Franklin's work, which was not done by a government employee, is in the public domain.

[david-a-wheeler]

No. Using something produced by a religious organization, and then allowing anyone else to use the improvements made by the government, does not violate the establishment clause. The US government works with faith-based organizations all the time (and rightly so).

[davelab6]

Libre Franklin holds the original rights

Rather, the authors who have copyrights in the Libre Franklin project hold original rights.

[thisisdano]

Addressed in #123