High court muddles Ten Commandments issue
- Jun 30, 2005
The U.S. Supreme Court issued split rulings June 27 on public exhibits of the Ten Commandments that appeared to do little to clarify the issue.
In 5-4 decisions, the justices invalidated displays of the Ten Commandments in two Kentucky courthouses while upholding a stand-alone monument of the Decalogue on the Texas capitol grounds.
The court ruled Ten Commandments displays in courthouses in Kentucky’s McCreary and Pulaski counties violated the First Amendment’s ban on government establishment of religion, even though they were set in an officially sponsored exhibit that included the Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights and Magna Carta. In the Texas ruling, the justices found constitutional a granite monument donated by a private organization.
Supporters of government accommodation of religion largely expressed disappointment with the decisions.
Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission President Richard Land said he expected the court to “rule against a display by a government entity and accommodate a display by a nongovernmental group on government property.”
“The most alarming thing about this pair of rulings is that the decision to accommodate a Ten Commandments display donated by a nongovernmental source only won 5-4, which shows the degree to which this court has embraced secular fundamentalism as its religion,” Land said. “The Kentucky courthouse decision shows that, as Justice [Antonin] Scalia said in the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas opinion [striking down state anti-sodomy laws], the majority of this court has ‘taken sides in the culture war,’ and it’s the side of secular fundamentalists.”
R. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., wrote in a commentary on his website, “At the end of the day, the real winners were the lawyers, who can look forward to a tidal wave of litigation in the aftermath of these confusing decisions. The Court established no clear test for determining the constitutionality of Ten Commandments displays, and the contorted and shifting arguments contained in the various written opinions offer what can only be described as contradictory principles.”
Associate Justice Stephen Breyer was the only member of the court in the majority in both opinions. Breyer joined Associate Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O’Connor, David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg in ruling against the Kentucky displays. He joined Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Associates Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas in the majority in the Texas ruling.
Land said of the Kentucky courthouse decision, “If we allow the continuation of the brazen power grab of this judicial oligarchy masquerading as a Supreme Court, it will fundamentally alter our freedom and liberties. It is time for the American people to rise up and demand that we want government of the people, by the people and for the people back. We have not ceded our freedom and liberty to the imperial Supreme Court.”
On June 28, the justices announced they would not review a lower-court decision by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, Ohio, that Ten Commandments displays outside new schools in Adams County were unconstitutional.
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