Favorable Ten Commandments Ruling May Herald Positive Trend, Attorney Says
by Allie Martin
June 2, 2004
(AgapePress) - Despite a liberal group's efforts, a Ten Commandments monument that has stood for more than 30 years in a public park in Utah will not be removed.The Society of Separationists sued the city of Pleasant Grove City, Utah, and several of its officials, claiming the monument installed in 1971 by the Fraternal Order of Eagles violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. However, federal district court judge Bruce Jenkins dismissed the lawsuit.
The Thomas More Law Center, a public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and the American Center for Law and Justice office in New Hope, Kentucky, represented Pleasant Grove City and its officials in the matter.
According to Thomas More Law Center associate counsel Edward L. White, who handled the case, the judge's ruling states clearly that "the Ten Commandments can be displayed on public property without running afoul of the United States Constitution."
White says the Jenkins's decision may be part of a new trend. "For a while there, the federal courts had been ruling against the Ten Commandments, so these monuments had to be taken down," he observes. "But recently the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is based in Texas, upheld a decision that the Ten Commandments can be displayed in the state capitol building in Texas."
White commends the Pleasant Grove City officials for standing up to the atheist group. "What we find more times that not," he says, "is that cities will immediately -- just based on the threat of a lawsuit -- remove the monument rather than try to fight this. More times than not, the towns just pick up the monument and move it because they don't want to get involved in a lawsuit."
But Thomas More Law Center's chief counsel, Richard Thompson, says communities should not let the fear of legal expenses intimidate them into removing Ten Commandments monuments and similar displays without a fight. He says the Pleasant Grove case provides "proof that communities can fight the atheists and win," and the law center "stands ready to defend cities in these situations without charge."
Judge Jenkins noted in his ruling that the Ten Commandments are an acknowledgment of "one historic source of guidance and direction," and "one time-honored source of standards of human conduct." The federal judge also said the public display of the Ten Commandments is for the benefit and interest of all individuals, whether religious or not, because the "history of man is inseparable from the history of religion."
