Supreme Court Justices Hear Arguments in Religious Monument CaseTony Mauro11-13-2008The Supreme Court on Wednesday seemed likely to give its blessing to a Utah town that rejected a small religious sect’s request to install a monument on public park land, even though the town accepted a Ten Commandments display in the same park 32 years earlier. Most justices during oral argument Wednesday seemed to oppose the idea that by accepting one, Pleasant Grove City had to accept the other because of the First Amendment’s bar against content-based speech discrimination by the government.”You have a Statue of Liberty; do we have to have a statue of despotism?” Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. asked. “Or do we have to put any president who wants to be on Mount Rushmore?”In the same vein, Justice Antonin Scalia wondered aloud if a city that allows any kind of memorial on public land would have to also permit “a monument to chocolate chip cookies” if a resident proposed it.But during oral arguments in the case Pleasant Grove City, Utah v. Summum, several justices also expressed discontent with the Court’s own First Amendment doctrines that make the Utah case so difficult to resolve. The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled that the Summum memorial had to be accepted, because the park was a public forum where such discrimination is not allowed under the Court’s First Amendment rulings.Under Court precedent it also appears that the only way a municipality could say yes to the Ten Commandments display and no to the Summum group’s “Seven Aphorisms” monument is to define the Ten Commandments memorial as a form of speech by the city government, rather than private religious speech. The Court has ruled that when the government speaks it can pick and choose its messages, adopting some and rejecting others.Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice, arguing for Pleasant Grove City, told the justices that monuments in the city’s park “have been selected by the government, are owned by the government, controlled by the government, and are displayed on government property. When the government is speaking, it is free from the traditional free speech constraints of the First Amendment.”Even that rule was questioned. Deputy Solicitor General Daryl Joseffer, arguing in support of the Utah city, said that because of the government speech doctrine, “the Vietnam Veterans Memorial did not open us up to a Viet Cong memorial.” In the same way that a library or a museum curator can select some works and not others, so can the government pick which events or beliefs to commemorate.But Justices Samuel Alito Jr. and John Paul Stevens asked whether that level of government discretion also means that in the case of the Vietnam Veterans memorial, the government could choose to exclude the names of veterans who espoused views the government did not like, or who were homosexuals. With apparent reluctance, Joseffer said those names could be excluded under First Amendment principles, though he said there could be equal protection or due process issues.Sekulow’s insistence on the “government speech” position also prompted some justices to warn him that if in fact the government was speaking when it favored the Ten Commandments over the Summum display, it could be in violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment, which has been interpreted to bar government endorsement of one religion over another.”It seems to me you’re walking into a trap under the establishment clause,” Roberts told Sekulow. “If it’s government speech, it may not present a free-speech problem, but what is the government doing speaking, supporting the Ten Commandments?”Sekulow noted that no establishment clause claim had been raised in Summum’s initial challenge to the city’s action. But several briefs filed in the case asserted that such a claim was precluded by 10th Circuit precedent.”This case is an example of the tyranny of labels,” said Justice Anthony Kennedy, a potential swing vote in the case. He was objecting to another set of First Amendment principles involved in the case — whether public park land, usually viewed as the classic public forum where all speakers are allowed, can be categorized as a nonpublic forum when it comes to placement of permanent monuments in limited public spaces.Pamela Harris, of counsel at O’Melveny & Myers, insisted on behalf of the Summum sect that in a public forum “the government may not favor one message over another.”But when justices asked how cities, practically speaking, could be selective in which memorials it would allow, Harris said there was a simple option. She said governments could formally “adopt any existing monuments as government speech” and announce that, henceforth, “these parks are available only to government displays.”Justices wrestled with Harris’ proposal, with Justice Antonin Scalia stating, “Ms. Harris, we need a clear rule here.” Scalia suggested it would be impractical for cities to investigate and adopt all the memorials on public lands.”It may be a very nice world,” said Scalia, “but it happens not to be the world under which our Constitution has subjected this country.”
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Isnt it interesting that xians seem to have such a hard time understanding why people want to enforce the 1st Amendment until a non xian religion demands the same freedom of expression that xians have traditionally enjoyed?
Separation of Church and State.
Separation of Gum and Hair.
The govt. now has gum in its hair and it’s worried about whether it should include some other flavors. The simplest solution is to pull out the piece of gum. It might stick, it might hurt a little, but in the end its better for their hair, and better for the gum.
Kennedy is the justice to watch here. He’s the swing voter on the present court. If he comes down against equal representation, we’ve lost it until one of the five ideologues dies or retires.
atheists are cool
jokes
atheists-suck-balls
It is clear that you are pissed. Is it because your allies in the GOP have been rejected by America? Soon your religious fantasies will be rejected by America as well.
The mindless miss the point here, if you can put a monument of ten commandments in a public park, have you opened the civil rights question if you can ban a monument of an opposing religious view. While free thinkers laugh, the way marches forward, because the only real solution to satifying the constitution is to eventually ban all religious symbols from public property, and that is what is happenning one case at a time. Already, the city leadership has stated a willingness to remove the ten commandments as a precidence in order to block the mummy people from gaining legal equal time to post a momument of their own. One step at a time. Worst case senario, ten commandments disappear, and that is a worst case I can live with.
NeoWolfe
Do me next, atheists-suck-…I mean gaysareagay, do me next!
It’s obvious that religion is not keeping the violent tendencies of the empathetically challenged mutants like gaysaregay under adequate control. I suggest haldol and incarceration.
mdetrano
“Separation of Gum and Hair”. That’s great!
The government is not a citizen. The government does not have rights. Citizens have rights.
“Separation of Gum and Hair” be careful where you step phreedm…..ya might step in some familiar goo….
gaysaregay,
Sounds like a fun night to me, mate.
Now to Dave,
Maybe now you can understand my frustration. You bring up a valid point of discussion, and it turns into something stupid before the first ten comments are posted.
NeoWolfe
The origin of the Spaghetti Monster itself lies in precisely this sort of wedge — inclusion of one religion invites them all, and in the end the only reasonable course is not to go down that path at all. I’m not sure who’s missing what point, but that’s the case whichever side is laughing.
Now wait a minute, I’ve been touched by the noodily appendage of The Speghetti Monster. I know for a FACT he is our ONE and Only Savior! How dare you equate him with all the other foolish cults!!!!
Ramen
Ladies and gentleman:
I live in a small town in Northern California called Hollister (not related to clothes line). We have two newspapers that serve our right-wing Palin loving little berg. The Hollister freelance which publishes its trite account of the day only twice a week and the Pinnacle, a once a week freebie paper.
I wrote a letter to both papers instructing the interested readers on how to download the IRS form 13909, this is the Tax-exempt organization complaint form. This form is what is used to charge the LDS church with a breach of the tax code in their handling of prop.8 and to remove their tax-exempt status.
Now, the freelance printed a total of four letters in its two day publications, neither of them mine, the pinnacle 7 letters in its one day edition, mine excluded.
I am asking any of you who feel that it is wrong for churches to dictate political policy and yet retain their tax-exempt status to please write to these two papers and tell them so, and if you are so inclined, please include the instructions to download and send out form 13909 from the dept of the treasury-IRS
editorfreelancenews.com
letters@pinnaclenews.com
Please do this, its important
You may want to hold up on that.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/
2008/11/mormon_meddlers.php
It seems the Mormons may not not have violated the conditions of their tax-exempt status in that campaign.
The tax laws are complicated. I understand some nonprofits can campaign on referendum questions, just not for or against a candidate for elective office.
That Catholic priest who tried to intimidate voters for Obama might be a more suitable target for the IRS.
suck my balls gays are gay
Thanks ga4ry for helping out with this. I was able to get about 10 friends to sign the IRS complaint agaisnt the LDS and mail it again too.
Did you participate in any of the 175 national protests yesterday for marriage eqaulity and against CA’s Prop 8? we had about 1,400 people here in Raleigh, including myself, that marched around the state capitol and then raised a rainbow flag on the flag pole outside the gate of the governors mansion. It really made me feel as if I might see the end to institutionalised bigotry against gays in my lifetime.
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/1296735.html
godless, I did not but my daughter and son did, the wife and I were very proud