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Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore loses Ten Commandments case
It's not whether the Ten Commandments are posted in a courthouse that matters, U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson ruled yesterday in an eagerly awaited decision. It's how they're posted.

"The court does not hold that it is improper in all instances to display the Ten Commandments in government buildings; nor does the court hold that the Ten Commandments are not important, if not one of the most important, sources of American law," Thompson wrote (PDF | Word | WordPerfect). "Rather the court's limited holding … is that the Chief Justice's actions and intentions in this case crossed the Establishment Clause line between the permissible and the impermissible."

The evidence that the line was crossed is overwhelming, Thompson's very readable ruling says. "No other Ten Commandments display represents such an extreme case of religious acknowledgment, endorsement and even proselytization. In other words, if there is a Ten Commandments display tradition in this country, it is definitely not the tradition embodied by the chief justice's monument."

Moore's 5,300-pound granite display, which he brought into the judicial building secretly after he was named chief justice, "is nothing less than an obtrusive year-round religious display installed … in order to place the government's weight behind an obvious effort to proselytize on behalf of a particular religion, the Chief Justice's religion," Thompson said. "The only way to miss the religious or nonsecular appearance of the monument would be to walk through the Alabama State Judicial Building with one's eyes closed."

Moore didn't even bother to hide his religious intent, Thompson wrote: "The Ten Commandments monument, as the Chief Justice made clear both at the unveiling ceremony and at trial, is a granite reminder to Alabama judges and justices and all other state citizens of the ultimate sovereignty of the Judeo-Christian God over both the state and the church, and of how all men and women should, therefore, look to God as the ultimate source of the moral foundation of all the laws of this country; for, it was God, and not man or the state, that gave us the Ten Commandments."

Such a view of God and state is a fine belief for a person, Thompson ruled, stressing that he doesn't disagree with it. But it's problematic to say, "as a matter of American law, the Judeo-Christian God must be recognized as sovereign over the state, or even that the state may adopt that view. … In fact, this country's founding documents support the idea that it is from the people, and not God, that the state draws its powers."

Reaction yesterday came mainly from Moore's opponents. "It offends me going to work every day and coming face to face with that symbol, which says to me that the state endorses Judge Moore's version of the Judeo-Christian God above all others," said Stephen R. Glassroth, the Jewish Montgomery lawyer who brought the suit.

The usual activists had their statements, too. "Although I am elated by today's decision, I remain deeply concerned about the future of the separation of religion and government in this country," said C. Welton Gaddy, executive director of the Interfaith Alliance. "Isn't religious liberty in real trouble when we have to commend a court's decision to uphold a bedrock provision of the United States Constitution?"

"This ruling is a big setback for Roy Moore's religious crusade," said Americans United for the Separation of Church and State president Barry Lynn Promoting the Ten Commandments is a task for our houses of worship, not government officials."

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November (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46