On The Front Lines
Supreme Court Declares Kentucky Religious Displays Unconstitutional
WASHINGTON, DC -- In a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has declared unconstitutional the display of the Ten Commandments on the walls of two county courthouses in Kentucky. In a majority opinion by Justice David H. Souter, the Court declared that the ruling does not mean that a sacred text can never be integrated into a governmental display on law and history. It found, however, that the displays in Kentucky were motivated by a religious purpose, which did not change as the display was modified twice during court challenges. The court declined to prohibit all displays in court buildings or on government property. Attorneys for The Rutherford Institute filed a friend of the court brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in McCreary County, Kentucky v. ACLU of Kentucky, one of two Ten Commandments cases that came before the high court this year. A copy of the Institute's brief is available here."The question in this case all along was whether or not once a government institution posts the Ten Commandments by itself and later adds other documents, it can cure what the Court today has held to be a religious purpose," said John W. Whitehead, president and founder of The Rutherford Institute. "The unfortunate problem with this decision is the utter lack of direction by the Court in terms of their Establishment Clause test."
In McCreary County, Kentucky v. ACLU of Kentucky, McCreary and Pulaski county officials hung framed copies of the Ten Commandments in their courthouses and later added other documents, such as the Magna Carta and Declaration of Independence, after the display was challenged. Despite the presence of the other documents, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the Ten Commandments displays in Kentucky county courthouses were unconstitutional, holding that the displays were religious because the Ten Commandments was "blatantly religious." Institute attorneys argued that the historical document display that the Sixth Circuit found to violate the First Amendment's Establishment Clause due to the inclusion of the Ten Commandments is consistent with displays that the Supreme Court has upheld against Establishment Clause challenges. Institute attorneys had asked the justices to reverse the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals' ruling that the Ten Commandments displays are unconstitutional, insisting that the lower court's reasoning inevitably would result in hostility toward religion. Institute attorneys also asked the Court to renounce its Establishment Clause "Lemon Test" and return to a historically accurate and logically sound application of the Clause to the federal government. Supporters of constitutional Ten Commandments displays have pointed out that the U.S. Supreme Court chamber contains a frieze depicting lawgivers through the ages, including Moses holding tablets representing the Ten Commandments and showing some of the religious codes in Hebrew. The Rutherford Institute's "Constitutional Guidelines for Displaying the Ten Commandments" are also available here.
The Rutherford Institute is an international, nonprofit civil liberties organization committed to defending constitutional and human rights.
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