Greene Files Third Nativity Lawsuit

He’s back.

San Antonio atheist Patrick Greene has turned his sights back to the annual nativity scene displayed on the Henderson County Courthouse lawn each December.

Greene says he filed a lawsuit against County Judge Richard Sanders yesterday in Bexar County to have the nativity scene removed to private property. While aware of Greene’s claims, county officials today said they have not been served nor had any official notification of the lawsuit.

County officials had no comment on the lawsuit at this time.

Greene said he believes his current effort is patriotic.

“I have done only two things for my country in my life,” he wrote in an email. “I served in the Air Force for eight and a half years from 1968-77, then I filed the lawsuit in 1999 against the city of Ontario for their 12 nativity scenes and won that one. And since I am now a senior citizen, I wanted to do one last thing for my country before I am too old to do anything else.”

Henderson County residents were still rebounding from the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) nativity scene controversy when they first heard the name Patrick Greene in February 2012.

The San Antonio atheist, who is not part of the FFRF, became interested in Henderson County after watching video of a Christian nativity rally held on the courthouse square. He sent a letter to Commissioners’ Court threatening a lawsuit if the nativity scene was not moved to private property.

Then things got weird. Greene changed his mind because he believed he was going blind. He didn’t go blind and he now says he was experiencing “old age eye problems that were normal.”

A group, led by Sand Springs Baptist Church, collected $400 and sent it to the struggling Greene and his wife to help with expenses. Greene responded by flirting with converting to Christianity, although he reverted back to being an atheist fairly quickly. Still, the atheist-helped-by-Christians story went viral, garnering the county national attention.

Greene was then quiet for nearly eight months, before bursting back onto the scene in December 2013 with a lawsuit against the City of Athens.

He said he filed against the city because the city pays Keep Athens Beautiful $10,000 annually. The lawsuit read: “These funds were partly used for the upkeep of a life size Christian Nativity display, thereby violating Article 1, Sections 6 and 7 of the Texas Constitution.”

Greene withdrew that lawsuit less than a week after it was filed because he believed Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott asked the Bexar County District Clerk for a copy. Greene also said he was afraid of Christian violence. Now he says the city was the wrong defendant.

But to prove that you can never be sure of what Greene will do next, he closed out the year by filing another lawsuit, this time against County Judge Richard Sanders.

In that lawsuit, filed Dec. 28, Greene claims Sanders, “abused his position as judicial head of Henderson County, by giving official governmental permission to private citizens to display this Christian Nativity scene. This also violated Article 1, Section 6 of the Texas Constitution; ‘No human authority ought, in any case whatever, to control or interfere with the rights of conscience in matters of religion, and no preference shall ever be given by lay to any religious society or mode of worship.’”

Greene said he wanted the nativity scene moved to private property.

Greene dropped that lawsuit in January 2013 “because something far more important has come up,” he said. “I discovered a woman who is in prison who got there without due process, and I am going to try to get her out.”

Greene has a history of atheist activism going back to at least 1998, when he challenged – and changed – the way the city of Ontario, California stored and cared for a series of nativity scenes. He has also twice filed lawsuits against the San Antonio mayor’s office for prayer-related reasons, and has pursued legal action against other entities.