However, shortly after an Associated Press wire story went out reporting he would remove the phrase from the tax form, Christian County Assessor Tommy Bilyeu, an ordained minister, changed his mind and announced the religious oath would stay in use.
An unenforced statute in the Missouri law books mandates the religious wording for the oath on county tax forms sent to taxpayers in third-class Missouri counties. The statutes provide for a secular oath to be sent to first-class county taxpayers. Most counties--96 of the 114 counties--are considered third-class (a few are actually fourth-class).
Since making its first complaint, the Foundation has since been contacted by Missouri individuals opposing the presence of the oath on their personal property tax assessment lists in Grundy, Stone, and Taney counties. The Foundation has written assessors in each of these counties to point out that the state tax commissioner's office is on record saying they do not enforce the signing of the oath.
The Foundation has also written the assessor in Cape Girardeau County, a first-class county which imposes the religious oath, to point out that office has no statutory authority to use it.
The law, apparently dating to 1909, provides penalties of possible jailtime or fines ranging from $10 to $1,000 for failure to sign the oath.
At least some third-class counties do not include the oath. According to a news story by Susan Wade of the Springfield News-Leader, the nearby third-class counties of Dade, Dallas and Texas do not impose the oath, while Webster, Lawrence, Taney and Wright do. The assessor's office in Webster County told the reporter it permits Amish taxpayers to cross off the oath.
When Wade contacted an area state representative, who is Catholic, about whether he would consider sponsoring a change in the law, Rep. Jim Kreider, D-Nixa, told her:
"It's always been a country of majority rule and also a country our forefathers founded with Christian beliefs."
"What strikes us as most peculiar," commented spokeswoman Annie Laurie Gaylor, who has been handling the Missouri complaints, "is that the statute has a built-in inequity, in requiring that only third-class counties impose the religious oath. The insulting implication is that people living in less prosperous counties need to be threatened with the wrath of God in order to fill out their tax forms honestly."
The religious oath violates not only the First Amendment but the Missouri Constitution, which guarantees the state can show no preference for religion or coerce citizens to worship.
Gaylor said citizens should not have to sign a statement that they believe in a god, and crossing out the oath doesn't remedy the violation of personal conscience, even if penalties are not enforced. "You shouldn't have to identify yourself as a nonconformist," the Springfield News-Leader quoted Gaylor saying.
After a piece by a criminal defense attorney ran in a local paper promoting enforcement of the law, the original complainant from Nixa, Missouri, commented: "What started out as a minor irritation has become something I could be thrown in jail for!"