Thou Shalt Not Place Monument
A lawsuit tinged with questions of free speech and separation of church and state ended when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the Summum religious group's attempts to install a marker of its own in a Utah park that already has a Ten Commandments monument.
A lawsuit tinged with questions of free speech and separation of church and state ended when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the Summum religious group’s attempts to install a marker of its own in a Utah park that already has a Ten Commandments monument. The proposed monument would commemorate the Seven Aphorisms that Summum says Moses destroyed on Mount Sinai.
WAIT BEFORE YOU GO...The New York Times:
The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Wednesday that a small religious group cannot force a city in Utah to place a granite marker in a local park that already is home to a Ten Commandments display.
In a case involving the Salt Lake City-based Summum, the court said that governments can decide what to display in a public park without running afoul of the First Amendment.
Pleasant Grove City, Utah, rejected the group’s marker, prompting a federal lawsuit that argued that a city can’t allow some private donations of displays in its public park and reject others. The federal appeals court in Denver agreed.
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