A woman discharged from the Marine Corps for violating multiple direct orders is fighting to the highest military court.

Military Times (“Bible verse sends former Marine back to court”):

The case involves former Lance Cpl. Monifa Sterling, who in May 2013 was assigned at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, to a desk job handling complaints from other Marines experiencing issues with their Common Access Cards.

Sterling taped three paper copies of the same quote — “No weapon formed against me shall prosper” — in 28-point type on her computer’s tower, her monitor and her desk. The line is a variant of a passage from Isaiah 57:14; Sterling said the three copies reflected the Trinity.

A native New Yorker and Christian who does not affiliate with a particular denomination, Sterling told military officials that the posted passage helped her summon patience when dealing with short-tempered Marines who were frustrated with their CAC problems.

[…]

I don’t see how Hobby Lobby applies here. Sterling was not only a government employee, rather than the private citizen running a public accommodation, but a uniformed member of the armed forces. Government employees have substantially less expressive right in the workplace than is typical in the private sector, simply because our expression might be construed as government policy. Military personnel have more restrictions still because of the need for “good order and discipline.” There’s a long history of case law in support of these principles.

Sterling’s case gets even less complicated given that she was repeatedly ordered by her superiors to take down the verses. If she believed her staff sergeant’s order was illegal, she had every right to appeal it up the chain of command or even write her Congressman. She had no right at all to ignore it, let alone defy it repeatedly and brazenly.

This is sufficiently clear cut that I wouldn’t be surprised at all if court decided not to take the appeal at all.

outsidethebeltway.com