Recurring Attempts to Brand POW/MIA Missing Man Table as a Sectarian Christian Memorial Leads to Significant Legal Opinion from VA Office of General Counsel

January 18, 2024

Back in August 2023, a MRFF client had successfully approached the patient advocate at the Wilkes-Barre (PA) VAMC (Veterans Administration Medical Center) to remove a Bible that had been placed on the POW/MIA Table located in the ‘museum display area’ of the facility.  However, this client sought MRFF assistance when the removed Bible was replaced with a book of ‘New Testament Psalms/Proverbs’ in another blatant attempt to conspicuously mark this display as a memorial to Christian POWs and MIAs.  MRFF’s assistance led to an emailed commitment on August 24, 2023 from a top official at the Wilkes-Barre VAMC:

“In the future, if a book of faith is found to be displayed on the table, please notify myself or our Patient Advocate, (VA Medical Center Wilkes-Barre Patient Advocate name withheld), so we can have it removed.”

Reliance on this commitment from the VAMC leadership by MRFF and our clients was again tested by individuals who are apparently intent on ‘marking public territory’ as exclusively Christian when an enormous bible was photographed on the POW/MIA Memorial Table.  This photo was sent to the Wilkes-Barre VAMC leadership on January 11, 2024 with a request to “…remove the holy book from the POW-MIA table.” 

However, rather than quickly removing the gigantic Bible from the display per prior commitments and actions, Assistant Medical Center Director William Klaips told MRFF President/Founder Mikey Weinstein that he needed a whole week to investigate the matter.  Also noteworthy is that the memorial, which the facility repeatedly referred to in August/2023 as “our” table, suddenly becoming the American Legion Auxiliary’s table, somehow making the jumbo symbol of the Jesus juggernaut on it okay even though a Bible is NOT included in the American Legion’s original table tradition specifications or their ‘Chaplain’s Manual’.   MRFF’s Senior Research Director Chris Rodda also verified that a Bible is NOT included in the American Legion’s brand new “2024 Officer’s Guide and Manual of Ceremonies”.

On behalf of our 14 clients in this matter (6 are practicing Christians (4 Protestants and 2 Roman Catholics), 2 practice the Jewish faith, 1 practices the Islamic faith, 1 follows the Sikh faith, 1 follows his/her Native American/Indigenous Peoples faith, and 3 follow non-faith traditions such as humanist, secularist, atheist and/or agnostic), Mikey emailed the following demand (and background) on January 17, 2024 to Russell E. Lloyd, Medical Center Director of the Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania Veterans Affairs Health Care System:

(1) Medical Center Director Russell E. Lloyd, on behalf of its 14 military veteran client patients at your Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, VAMC facility, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) demands that you immediately remove the illicit, unconstitutional, enormous Christian Bible from the referenced POW/MIA “Missing Man Table” display which is under your personal control and direction. 

(2) Incredibly, this is now the THIRD time MRFF clients have been compelled to demand the removal of a Christian bible from this POW/MIA table in just the last 7 months at your VA medical facility….  The first 2 times you removed the bible expeditiously. Your OWN staff even told us at MRFF IN WRITING on Aug. 24, 2023, at 3:27 pm MDT, after acceding to our demands to remove that bible for the 2nd time, to alert them if any other faith books were ever again placed on that POW/MIA table so that they (your own VAMC staff) could remove them.

In response to this demand, the Medical Center’s director, Russell E. Lloyd, sent a vague email reply to Mikey, saying only “This has been addressed.”  After demanding clarification to this vague statement, Mikey received the following email response from Director Lloyd:

“On the advice of VA’s Office of General Counsel, the Bible has been removed and will not be replaced.“

The tremendous significance of this re-acquired victory on behalf of our clients is succinctly noted by Mikey:

What is particularly significant about this MRFF victory today is that getting the sectarian Christian Bible removed from this POW/MIA table in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, was SPECIFICALLY credited by the Medical Center Director at Wilkes-Barre VAMC, Russell E. Lloyd, to the precise legal advice he got from the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of General Counsel itself, located in the VA headquarters in Washington DC. This now creates a fantastic and impactful legal precedent which MRFF can and certainly WILL use for its aggrieved client base when we inevitably fight this exact same battle again throughout the VA, and even to a non-trivial extent with other Federal agencies, such as DOD, DOT (US Maritime Service), and DHS (US Coast Guard). The same goes for our MRFF clients in all of the 17 national security agencies. This is truly a BANNER day!”