The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, made binding upon the States through the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, provides that government "shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." The question presented to this court is whether the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court violated the Establishment Clause when he placed a slightly over two-and-a-half ton granite monument--engraved with the Ten Commandments and other references to God--in the Alabama State Judicial Building with the specific purpose and effect, as the court finds from the evidence, of acknowledging the Judeo-Christian God as the moral foundation of our laws...
Based on the evidence presented during a week-long trial and for the reasons that follow, this court holds that the evidence is overwhelming and the law is clear that the Chief Justice violated the Establishment Clause. But, in announcing this holding today, the court believes it is important to clarify at the outset that 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. Rather the court's limited holding, as will be explained below in more detail, is that the Chief Justice's actions and intentions in this case crossed the Establishment Clause line between the permissible and the impermissible...
Both in appearance and in stated purpose, the Chief Justice's Ten Commandments monument is an "extreme case"; it is nothing less than "an obtrusive year-round religious display" installed in the Alabama State Judicial Building 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...
In the Chief Justice's understanding, the Judeo-Christian God is sovereign over both the church and the state in this country, and both owe allegiance to that God... The court appreciates that, as a matter of conscience, one may believe that the Judeo-Christian God is sovereign over the state. In fact, the court understands that it is just this type of belief that the Free Exercise clause and the Establishment Clause are meant to protect. Thus, the court stresses that it is not disagreeing with Chief Justice Moore's beliefs regarding the relationship of God and the state. Rather, the court disagrees with the Chief Justice to the extent that it understands him to be saying that,
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...
The court appreciates that there are those who see a clear secular purpose in the Ten Commandments, for they command not only such things as "I am the Lord thy God" and "Thou shalt have no other Gods before me" but also, among other things, that "Thou shalt not kill" and "Thou shalt not steal," and that we should "Honour thy father and thy mother." If all Chief Justice Moore had done were to emphasize the Ten Commandments' historical and educational importance (for the evidence shows that they have been one of the sources of our secular laws) or their importance as a model code for good citizenship (for we all want our children to honor their parents, not to kill, not to steal, and so forth), this court would have a much different case before it. But the Chief Justice did not limit himself to this; he went far, far beyond. He installed a two-and-a-half ton monument in the most prominent place in a government building, managed with dollars from all state taxpayers, with the specific purpose and effect of establishing a permanent recognition of the "sovereignty of God," the Judeo-Christian God, over all citizens in this country, regardless of each taxpaying citizen's individual personal beliefs or lack thereof. To this, the Establishment Clause says no.
Glassroth v. Moore, No. 01-T-1268-N (M.D. Alabama 2002)
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