http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8375948/
Split rulings on Ten Commandments displays
Supreme Court: Courthouse exhibits cross line, but outdoor tablet OK
BREAKING NEWS
The Associated Press
Updated: 11:06 a.m. ET June 27, 2005
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Monday struck down certain Ten
Commandments displays inside courthouses but gave more leeway when
such exhibits are on the grounds of public property.
The justices found that a six-foot granite monument on the grounds of
the Texas Capitol does not cross the line between church and state.
In an earlier ruling, however, the justices held that two courthouse
exhibits in Kentucky crossed the line between separation of church and
state because they promoted a religious message.
In that 5-4 decision, the court declined to prohibit all displays in
court buildings or on government property. Justices left legal wiggle
room, saying that some displays — like their own courtroom frieze —
would be permissible if they’re portrayed neutrally in order to honor
the nation’s legal history.
But framed copies in two Kentucky courthouses went too far in
endorsing religion, the court held.
“The touchstone for our analysis is the principle that the First
Amendment mandates government neutrality between religion and
religion, and between religion and nonreligion,” Justice David Souter
wrote for the majority.
“When the government acts with the ostensible and predominant purpose
of advancing religion, it violates the central Establishment clause
value of official religious neutrality,” he said.
Souter was joined in his opinion by other members of the liberal bloc
— Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer,
as well as Reagan appointee Sandra Day O’Connor, who provided the
swing vote.
Scalia writes dissent
In a dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia argued that Ten Commandments
displays are a legitimate tribute to the nation’s religious and legal
history.
Government officials may have had a religious purpose when they
originally posted the Ten Commandments display by itself in 1999. But
their efforts to dilute the religious message since then by hanging
other historical documents in the courthouses made it constitutionally
adequate, Scalia said.
He was joined in his opinion by Chief William Rehnquist, as well as
Justice Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas.
“In the court’s view, the impermissible motive was apparent from the
initial displays of the Ten Commandments all by themselves: When that
occurs: the Court says, a religious object is unmistakable,” he wrote.
“Surely that cannot be.”
“The Commandments have a proper place in our civil history,” Scalia
added.
Earlier oral arguments
The justices heard oral arguments in the Kentucky and Texas cases last
March.
The Bush administration, via acting Solicitor General Paul Clement,
argued against a strict First Amendment wall between church and state.
Ten Commandments displays should be allowed on government property
because they pay tribute to America’s religious and legal history, he
argued in court. “The idea of having a fence around the Ten
Commandments to make clear the state has nothing to do with it, I
think that is bending it too far,” said
David Friedman, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union who
is challenging courthouse displays in Kentucky, countered: “An
assertion that the Ten Commandments is THE source, THE foundation of
our legal system ... that is simply wrapping the Ten Commandments in
the flag, and that’s endorsement.”
In their comments and questions from the bench, justices were
reluctant to adopt a blanket ban on such displays. They struggled to
formulate a clear constitutional rule that could determine the fate of
thousands of religious symbols on public property around the country,
including one in their own courtroom featuring Moses holding the
sacred tablets.
Justice Antonin Scalia noted that legislative proclamations and prayer
invoking God’s name are permissible. “I don’t see why the one is good
and the other is bad,” he said.
Texas case background
During oral arguments in the Texas case, Erwin Chemerinsky, a lawyer
representing a man who sought the removal of the tablet, told the
justices the display is a “religious symbol.” The prominence of the
display on the capitol grounds and the fact that so many of the
commandments deal with God “does promote religion,” he maintained.
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, in his court filing, wrote that
“countless monuments, medallions, plaques, sculptures, seals,
frescoes, and friezes — including, of course, the Supreme Court’s own
courtroom frieze — commemorate the Decalogue. Nothing in the
Constitution requires these historic artifacts to be chiseled away or
erased.”
Chemerinsky countered that “the government’s symbolic endorsement of
religion is most obvious from the content of the monument itself. In
large letters, the monument proclaims ’I AM the LORD thy God.”’
Ten Commandments monuments are common in town squares, courthouses and
other government-owned land around the country. At issue was whether
they violate the First Amendment ban on any law “respecting an
establishment of religion,” or simply represent a secular tribute to
America’s legal heritage.
The question has sparked dozens of heated legal battles, including one
in Alabama by Roy Moore. He lost his job as chief justice a year ago
after defying a federal order to remove a 5,300-pound Ten Commandments
monument he had installed in the state courthouse.
Poll: Most Americans back displays
An AP-Ipsos poll taken in late February found 76 percent supportive of
and 23 percent opposed to Ten Commandments displays.
Past polling has found majority support for the general concept of
separation of church and state. That sentiment is not always reflected
when people are asked about specific cases.
Support for the Ten Commandments displays was strong among most groups
in the AP poll of 1,000 adults conducted by Ipsos-Public Affairs Feb.
22-24. The margin of sampling error was plus or minus 3 percentage
points.
Older adults were more likely to feel the Ten Commandments should be
allowed on government property. People with only a high school
education or some college were more likely to favor allowing the
display of the Ten Commandments than those with college degrees.
People in the Midwest and South were more likely than those in other
regions to favor allowing such displays.
Earlier rulings
In the Texas case, the Fraternal Order of Eagles donated the exhibit
to the state in 1961, and it was installed about 75 feet from the
Capitol in Austin. The group gave thousands of similar monuments to
American towns during the 1950s and ’60s, and those have been the
subject of multiple court fights.
Two Kentucky counties, meanwhile, hung framed copies of the Ten
Commandments in their courthouses and added other documents, such as
the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence, after the
American Civil Liberties Union challenged the display.
While one lower court found the Texas display to be predominantly
nonreligious because it was one of 17 monuments in a 22-acre park,
another court struck down the Kentucky displays as lacking a “secular
purpose.” Kentucky’s modification of the display was a “sham” for the
religious intent behind it, the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals ruled.
The last time the Supreme Court weighed in on the issue was 1980, when
it struck down a Kentucky law requiring Ten Commandments displays in
public classrooms. Since then, more than two dozen courts have ruled
in conflicting ways on displays in various public contexts.
Justices have outlined several different tests in recent years to
determine their constitutionality:
# Secular purpose; was there religious motive?
# Endorsement; do they show a government neutrality toward religion?
# Coercion; do they place impermissible pressure, such as school
prayer?
# Historical practice; are they part of the “fabric of our society,”
such as legislative prayer?
The Supreme Court frieze, for instance, depicts Moses and the tablets
as well as 17 other figures including Hammurabi, Confucius, Napoleon
and Chief Justice John Marshall. Because it includes secular figures
in a way that doesn’t endorse religion, the display would be
constitutional, Justice John Paul Stevens suggested in a 1989 ruling.
The cases are Van Orden v. Perry, 03-1500, and McCreary County v.
ACLU, 03-1693.
© 2005 The Associated Press
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Contempt of Congress meter reading-offscale.
Hello, theocracy with a fundamentalist US Supreme
Court who will ensure church and state are joined
at the hip like clergy and altar boys.
America 1776-Jan 2001 RIP
"As democracy is perfected, the office of president
represents, more and more closely, the inner soul
of the people. On some great and glorious day the
plain folks of the land will reach their heart's
desire at last and the White House will be adorned
by a downright moron." --- H.L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)
Religion is the original war crime.
-Michelle Malkin (Feb 26, 2005)
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