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A proclamation declaring an annual “American Christian Heritage Month” in El Dorado County was, after a flurry of community opposition, unanimously rescinded Tuesday by the same board of supervisors that passed the original proclamation in July.

“I commend the board for reflecting on and revisiting the proclamation, and I applaud them for rescinding it,” Rabbi Evon Yakar of Temple Bat Yam in South Lake Tahoe told J. after the vote. Yakar was one of several local residents who spoke out against the proclamation at the board meeting. “I believe they did a good thing in reflecting on the divisiveness this caused.”

Marla Saunders, a massage therapist in South Lake Tahoe, told J. that she was “verklempt” after the decision. Saunders, who is Jewish, had started an online petition calling on the board to rescind the proclamation. The petition had more than 1,000 signatures as of Sept. 19. 

“I am definitely teary with joy,” she said.

The five supervisors in El Dorado County, a rural area with 200,000 residents south of Lake Tahoe, voted on July 18 to mark every July as American Christian Heritage Month. The vote passed 4-1, though one supervisor maintains that her abstention was recorded as an “aye.”

Opponents of the original vote, including Jewish community members and the American Civil Liberties Union, maintained that the language of the proclamation violated the principle of the separation of church and state and promoted one religion over others. The proclamation stated that there have been “attempts to change and distort our history” as a religious nation and then declared July as “American Christian History Month,” slightly different wording than in the document’s title.

In an Aug. 25 letter to the board of supervisors, the ACLU of Northern California objected to the proclamation because it “conveys that the County supports, promotes and endorses specific religious beliefs and, as such, violates the California Constitution.” The state constitution is even more stringent about the separation of church and state than the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits federal laws “respecting an establishment of religion.”

After Tuesday’s vote rescinding the proclamation, Angelica Salceda, the ACLU of Northern California’s director of democracy and civic engagement, told J. that her organization is “happy” about the new vote.

“The resolution suffered from constitutional infirmities,” she said in a statement. “The County has no business supporting, promoting, or endorsing specific religious beliefs. We think this decision is good for all residents of El Dorado County.”

On Sept. 11, El Dorado Supervisor Brooke Laine, who said that her abstention in the July vote was incorrectly recorded as an “aye” and that she also “regretted” her indecision, put the matter on the board’s agenda for Tuesday’s meeting. After 45 minutes of public discussion, the board rescinded it, 5-0.

“I very much regretted the initial vote and my participation in it,” Laine told J. again Tuesday, noting that community members used their public comment time to both oppose and support the resolution.

“At the end of the day, it was agreed by the board that there was a reason the founding fathers created a separation between church and state, and that we had blurred that line, although it was not our intention,” she said. “It felt like we got it right this second time. I commend my colleagues for recognizing and correcting” the mistake.

Public pressure and media coverage contributed to the board’s eventual decision, Laine told J. But the “threat of litigation” from the ACLU made a difference too, she said. “We couldn’t afford that.”

In a caveat to his praise of the board’s new decision, Yakar added that the supervisors didn’t correct their fundamental error, which was promoting the idea of America as a Christian nation.

“This was not about celebrating one group’s heritage” in the way of Pride Month or American Jewish Heritage Month, he told J. “This is about the clear use of language in the proclamation that our country was founded as a Christian country, and that is what we are celebrating.”

Supervisor John Hidahl, who introduced the proclamation, said before the July vote, according to the Sacramento Bee, “This great nation was founded not by religionists but by Christians. Not on religions but on a foundation of Christian principles and values.” The proclamation, he continued, is “clearly stating: don’t forget our history.”

That important nuance should have been explicitly discussed by the board on Tuesday, Yakar said. “I don’t feel the supervisors went far enough to address that.”

Saunders added a cautionary note too, saying that some opponents of the proclamation wouldn’t have come to Tuesday’s board meeting if law enforcement hadn’t been there. “They wouldn’t feel safe,” she said. That concerns her.

But still, she said, something good happened. 

“We beat back hate and division,” she said. “The way the community came together made me more optimistic about our country and the county I live in.”