Massachusetts police union defends St. Michael statue in battle with ACLU

QUINCY, Massachusetts (LifeSiteNews) — A broad coalition of religious groups, First Amendment advocates, and first responders’ unions are calling on Massachusetts to protect statues of St. Michael the Archangel and St. Florian outside of a new public safety building in Quincy.

Back in October, a liberal activist judge blocked the city from going forward with its plans to erect those statues, following a challenge by the left-wing and anti-religious ACLU, as LifeSiteNews previously reported. Opponents claim that putting up the statue is an illegal endorsement of Catholicism.

St. Michael is the patron saint of police officers, and St. Florian is the patron saint of firefighters.

The legal battle has now reached the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which is accepting amicus briefs in the case. The court will hear arguments from both sides on May 6. The case is titled Fitzmaurice v. City of Quincy.

In total, the Court has received 12 amicus briefs so far urging it to allow the statues to be erected.

“For centuries, firefighters the world over have honored Florian’s memory as a pioneering and heroic firefighter; his legacy is woven into the very fabric of the firefighting community today,” the International Association of Firefighters, along with its Massachusetts affiliate, wrote in its brief.

While he is a Catholic saint, “that is not why fire departments, nearly universally, remember him today,” the brief states.

A powerful coalition filed 12 friend-of-the-court briefs asking Massachusetts’ highest court to block the ACLU’s bid to stop the City of Quincy from honoring firefighters and police officers with statues of Florian and Michael the Archangel. pic.twitter.com/z2DGiYqhq8

— BECKET (@becketfund) April 16, 2026

Instead, St. Florian is “a symbol of the courage, selflessness, and sacrifice of firefighters around the world.”

“As his story is commonly told, Florian was tasked specifically with organizing fire brigades for the Roman army, and he personally trained an elite, highly successful, and widely recognized group of firefighters,” the amicus brief states.

Florian also “saved a village from ruin by singlehandedly extinguishing an enormous fire,” according to some reports.

The president of Quincy police union also filed a brief explaining why he supports the statue of St. Michael the Archangel.

Gregg Hartnett said the saint “is both the symbol and the model of our profession.”

“At all our ceremonies, whether a funeral honoring a fallen policeman, or even something less somber, we evoke the protection for the fallen and all of us of Michael the Archangel,” Harnett wrote in his amicus brief.

The case also drew support from the Knights of Columbus, the Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty, the Islam and Religious Freedom Action Team, and a group of Russian Orthodox bishops.

Legal experts say Massachusetts ‘Declaration of Rights’ does not forbid statues

The ACLU argues that the state’s “Declaration of Rights,” particularly Article 3, prohibits the statues.

In particular, the law says “all religious sects and denominations, demeaning themselves peaceably, and as good citizens of the commonwealth, shall be equally under the protection of the law; and no subordination of any one sect or denomination to another shall ever be established by law.”

But this does not mean there can be no promotion of religion, as Stanford University Professor Michael McConnell argues along with Emory University law Professor John Witte.

They argue “the statues do not deny equal protection to any religious sect or subordinate one sect to another” and “the history of public imagery in Massachusetts confirms that the statues fall well within the bounds of art. 3 as historical and religious symbols of bravery, courage, and honor.”

ACLU is ‘out of touch’ attorney says

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is representing the city of Quincy, ripped into the ACLU for being “out of touch.”

“By picking this fight, the ACLU has pitted itself against the very heroes who keep our communities safe,” Joseph Davis, senior counsel at Becket, said in a statement shared with LifeSiteNews.

“This broad coalition of firefighters and police—along with diverse faith communities, public policy experts, and legal scholars—proves just how out of touch the ACLU has become,” he said.

“We’re hopeful the court will see through this attack and side with Quincy,” Davis added.

Tom Bowes, the president of the Quincy firefighters union, affirmed the long history of firefighters turning to St. Florian for inspiration.

“Firefighters have honored Florian for generations because he embodies the values at the heart of our work: courage, sacrifice, and service,” he said.

“The statues honor this tradition.”