Federal ruling in Ga. ends Bible's tax-exempt status

Bill Rankin Cox News Service Feb. 8, 2006 12:00 AM

ATLANTA - A federal judge in Atlanta has struck down an old Georgia law that lets people buy the Bible without paying sales taxes.

The sales-tax exemption treats some religious and philosophical works more favorably than others, U.S. District Judge Richard Story ruled Monday.

"It is a fundamental principle of free-speech jurisprudence that 'regulations which permit the government to discriminate on the basis of the content of the message cannot be tolerated,' " Story wrote, citing a 1984 U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

The decades-old law exempts the sale of "Holy Bibles, testaments and similar books commonly recognized as being Holy Scripture."

A challenge was brought in November by Thomas Bud-long, a retired Atlanta librarian, and Candace Apple, who owns Phoenix & Dragon, a Sandy Springs, Ga., bookstore that specializes in the sale of metaphysical, religious and spiritual books. They are represented in their lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia.

Budlong has said that he paid sales tax when he purchased the Bhagavad Gita, a sacred Hindu text, and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert Pirsig.

Most book sales at Phoenix & Dragon are taxed.

Apple said Tuesday that she did not sue because she thought Bibles should be taxed.

"It just shouldn't get preferential treatment," she said. "Books concerning life and death, good and evil, even if they are not of a specific religious orientation, should qualify as books in the same category of the Scriptures."

Sadie Fields, state chairman of the Christian Coalition, denounced the decision.

"It does not reflect the will of the people in Georgia," she said. "I think it's an outrage."

She also said she would oppose expanding the sales tax exemption to other spiritual philosophies. "I don't see any comparison between Scripture and some metaphysical nonsense," she said.