Girl Scout Council Sued Over Oath Issue

SAN DIEGO — The Orange County attorney who successfully sued the Boy Scouts on behalf of his two sons filed a second lawsuit Tuesday against the local Girl Scout council, seeking $250,000 in punitive damages because the organization is requiring a Calexico girl from an atheist family to recite an oath to God.

“I’m after their pocketbooks right now, I’m after everything I can possibly get,” attorney James G. Randall said.

Randall said the suit was in response to “outrageous” conduct on behalf of the Scouting organization, including ongoing cancellation of Scouting events.

“I will not allow this organization and their New York and California lawyers to come in here and to continue to harass my clients, to cancel meetings and to cause this kind of grief to a 6-year-old child,” Randall said.

Without providing specifics, Randall charged that Scout leaders have canceled the events in order to avoid dealing with the pledge issue during the past week in direct violation of a temporary restraining order issued last week that ordered the Scouts to end the cancellations.

The lawsuit seeks a ruling that would allow Nitzya Cuevas-Macias to continue participating in the organization without reciting the part of the Girl Scout pledge that reads “I will try to serve God. . . .”

The girl’s family claims that Girl Scout representatives in the field office told them that she could avoid saying that part of the pledge and continue to participate in the group she joined in September. They claim that another official from the regional headquarters said two weeks afterward that she would, indeed, have to say the full pledge.

The lawsuit also contains documents from national Girl Scout leaders indicating that the group, unlike the Boy Scouts, does not require members to actually believe in God and that Scouts in other countries are not required to use religious language in their oaths.