JUDGEMENT UNTO TRUTH - BANKRUPT OF TRUTH
Zec. 7:9-14/
“In the past ADONAI-Tzv’ot said, ‘Administer true justice. Let everyone show mercy and compassion to his brother. Don’t oppress widows, orphans, foreigners or poor people. Don’t plot evil against each other.’ But they wouldn’t listen, they stubbornly turned their shoulder away and stopped up their ears, so that they wouldn’t have to hear it. Yes, they made their hearts as hard as a diamond, so that they wouldn’t hear the Torah and the messages that ADONAI-Tzva’ot had sent by his Spirit through the earlier prophets. This is why great anger came from ADONI-Tzava’ot and it came about that just as they hadn’t listened when he called, so ADONAI-Tzva’ot said, I wont listen when they call; but the power of a whirlwind I will disperse them among all nations which they have not known.
Zec. 8:3-16
Jerusalem will be called the city of “Truth”
The United States;
We hold these truths to be self evident but don’t display them, or teach them, or speak of them, to anyone or the AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION will sue you.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
________________________________________
No. 03—1693
McCREARY COUNTY, KENTUCKY, et al., PETI-
TIONERS v. AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES
UNION OF KENTUCKY et al.
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT
[June 27, 2005]
Justice Souter delivered the opinion of the Court.
Executives of two counties posted a version of the Ten Commandments on the walls of their courthouses. After suits were filed charging violations of the Establishment Clause, the legislative body of each county adopted a resolution calling for a more extensive exhibit meant to show that the Commandments are Kentucky’s “precedent legal code,” Def. Exh. 1 in Memorandum in Support of Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss in Civ. A. No. 99—507, p. 1 (ED Ky.) (hereinafter Def. Exh. 1). The result in each instance was a modified display of the Commandments surrounded by texts containing religious references as their sole common element. After changing counsel, the counties revised the exhibits again by eliminating some documents, expanding the text set out in another, and adding some new ones.
The issues are whether a determination of the counties’ purpose is a sound basis for ruling on the Establishment Clause complaints, and whether evaluation of the counties’ claim of secular purpose for the ultimate displays may take their evolution into account. We hold that the counties’ manifest objective may be dispositive of the constitutional enquiry, and that the development of the presentation should be considered when determining its purpose.
I
In the summer of 1999, petitioners McCreary County and Pulaski County, Kentucky (hereinafter Counties), put up in their respective courthouses large, gold-framed copies of an abridged text of the King James version of the Ten Commandments, including a citation to the Book of Exodus.1 In McCreary County, the placement of the Commandments responded to an order of the county legislative body requiring “the display [to] be posted in ‘a very high traffic area’ of the courthouse.” 96 F. Supp. 2d 679, 684 (ED Ky. 2000). In Pulaski County, amidst reported controversy over the propriety of the display, the Commandments were hung in a ceremony presided over by the county Judge-Executive, who called them “good rules to live by” and who recounted the story of an astronaut who became convinced “there must be a divine God” after viewing the Earth from the moon. Dodson, Commonwealth Journal, Jul. 25, 1999, p. A1, col. 2, in Memorandum in Support of Plaintiffs’ Motion for Preliminary Injunction in Civ. A. No. 99—509 (ED Ky.) (internal quotation marks omitted). The Judge-Executive was accompanied by the pastor of his church, who called the Commandments “a creed of ethics” and told the press after the ceremony that displaying the Commandments was “one of the greatest things the judge could have done to close out the millennium.” Id., at A2, col. 3 (internal quotation marks omitted). In both counties, this was the version of the Commandments posted:
“Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven images.
“Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.
“Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
“Honor thy father and thy mother.
“Thou shalt not kill.
“Thou shalt not commit adultery.
“Thou shalt not steal.
“Thou shalt not bear false witness.
“Thou shalt not covet.
“Exodus 20:3—17.”2 Def. Exh. 9 in Memorandum in Support of Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss in Civ. A. No. 99—507 (ED Ky.) (hereinafter Def. Exh. 9).
In each county, the hallway display was “readily visible to … county citizens who use the courthouse to conduct their civic business, to obtain or renew driver’s licenses and permits, to register cars, to pay local taxes, and to register to vote.” 96 F. Supp. 2d., at 684; American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky v. Pulaski County, Kentucky, 96 F. Supp. 2d 691, 695 (ED Ky. 2000).
In November 1999, respondents American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky et al. sued the Counties in Federal District Court under Rev. Stat. §1979, 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and sought a preliminary injunction against maintaining the displays, which the ACLU charged were violations of the prohibition of religious establishment included in the First Amendment of the Constitution.3 Within a month, and before the District Court had responded to the request for injunction, the legislative body of each County authorized a second, expanded display, by nearly identical resolutions reciting that the Ten Commandments are “the precedent legal code upon which the civil and criminal codes of … Kentucky are founded,” and stating several grounds for taking that position: that “the Ten Commandments are codified in Kentucky’s civil and criminal laws”; that the Kentucky House of Representatives had in 1993 “voted unanimously … to adjourn … ‘in remembrance and honor of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Ethics’ ”; that the “County Judge and … magistrates agree with the arguments set out by Judge [Roy] Moore” in defense of his “display [of] the Ten Commandments in his courtroom”; and that the “Founding Father[s] [had an] explicit understanding of the duty of elected officials to publicly acknowledge God as the source of America’s strength and direction.” Def. Exh. 1, at 1—3, 6.
As directed by the resolutions, the Counties expanded the displays of the Ten Commandments in their locations, presumably along with copies of the resolution, which instructed that it, too, be posted, id., at 9. In addition to the first display’s large framed copy of the edited King James version of the Commandments,4 the second included eight other documents in smaller frames, each either having a religious theme or excerpted to highlight a religious element. The documents were the “endowed by their Creator” passage from the Declaration of Independence; the Preamble to the Constitution of Kentucky; the national motto, “In God We Trust”; a page from the Congressional Record of February 2, 1983, proclaiming the Year of the Bible and including a statement of the Ten Commandments; a proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln designating April 30, 1863, a National Day of Prayer and Humiliation; an excerpt from President Lincoln’s “Reply to Loyal Colored People of Baltimore upon Presentation of a Bible,” reading that “[t]he Bible is the best gift God has ever given to man”; a proclamation by President Reagan marking 1983 the Year of the Bible; and the Mayflower Compact. 96 F. Supp. 2d, at 684; 96 F. Supp. 2d, at 695—696.
After argument, the District Court entered a preliminary injunction on May 5, 2000, ordering that the “display … be removed from [each] County Courthouse IMMEDIATELY” and that no county official “erect or cause to be erected similar displays.” 96 F. Supp. 2d, at 691; 96 F. Supp. 2d, at 702—703. The court’s analysis of the situation followed the three-part formulation first stated in Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971). As to governmental purpose, it concluded that the original display “lack[ed] any secular purpose” because the Commandments “are a distinctly religious document, believed by many Christians and Jews to be the direct and revealed word of God.” 96 F. Supp. 2d, at 686; 96 F. Supp. 2d, at 698. Although the Counties had maintained that the original display was meant to be educational, “[t]he narrow scope of the display–a single religious text unaccompanied by any interpretation explaining its role as a foundational document–can hardly be said to present meaningfully the story of this country’s religious traditions.” 96 F. Supp. 2d, at 686—687; 96 F. Supp. 2d, at 698. The court found that the second version also “clearly lack[ed] a secular purpose” because the “Count[ies] narrowly tailored [their] selection of foundational documents to incorporate only those with specific references to Christianity.”5 96 F. Supp. 2d, at 687; 96 F. Supp. 2d, at 699.
The Counties filed a notice of appeal from the preliminary injunction but voluntarily dismissed it after hiring new lawyers. They then installed another display in each courthouse, the third within a year. No new resolution authorized this one, nor did the Counties repeal the resolutions that preceded the second. The posting consists of nine framed documents of equal size, one of them setting out the Ten Commandments explicitly identified as the “King James Version” at Exodus 20:3—17, 145 F. Supp. 2d 845, 847 (ED Ky. 2001) and quoted at greater length than before:
“Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water underneath the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.
“Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain: for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
“Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
“Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.
“Thou shalt not kill.
“Thou shalt not commit adultery.
“Thou shalt not steal.
“Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet th[y] neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is th[y] neighbour’s.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 189a.
Assembled with the Commandments are framed copies of the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the lyrics of the Star Spangled Banner, the Mayflower Compact, the National Motto, the Preamble to the Kentucky Constitution, and a picture of Lady Justice. The collection is entitled “The Foundations of American Law and Government Display” and each document comes with a statement about its historical and legal significance. The comment on the Ten Commandments reads:
“The Ten Commandments have profoundly influenced the formation of Western legal thought and the formation of our country. That influence is clearly seen in the Declaration of Independence, which declared that ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.’ The Ten Commandments provide the moral background of the Declaration of Independence and the foundation of our legal tradition.” Id., at 180a.
The ACLU moved to supplement the preliminary injunction to enjoin the Counties’ third display,6 and the Counties responded with several explanations for the new version, including desires “to demonstrate that the Ten Commandments were part of the foundation of American Law and Government” and “to educate the citizens of the county regarding some of the documents that played a significant role in the foundation of our system of law and government.” 145 F. Supp. 2d, at 848 (internal quotation marks omitted). The court, however, took the objective of proclaiming the Commandments’ foundational value as “a religious, rather than secular, purpose” under Stone v. Graham, 449 U.S. 39 (1980) (per curiam), 145 F. Supp. 2d, at 849, and found that the assertion that the Counties’ broader educational goals are secular “crumble[s] … upon an examination of the history of this litigation,” Ibid. In light of the Counties’ decision to post the Commandments by themselves in the first instance, contrary to Stone, and later to “accentuat[e]” the religious objective by surrounding the Commandments with “specific references to Christianity,” the District Court understood the Counties’ “clear” purpose as being to post the Commandments, not to educate.7 145 F. Supp. 2d, at 849—850 (internal quotation marks omitted).
As requested, the trial court supplemented the injunction, and a divided panel of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed. The Circuit majority stressed that under Stone, displaying the Commandments bespeaks a religious object unless they are integrated with other material so as to carry “a secular message,” 354 F.3d 438, 449 (2003). The majority judges saw no integration here because of a “lack of a demonstrated analytical or historical connection [between the Commandments and] the other documents.” Id., at 451. They noted in particular that the Counties offered no support for their claim that the Ten Commandments “provide[d] the moral backdrop” to the Declaration of Independence or otherwise “profoundly influenced” it. Ibid. (Internal quotation marks omitted). The majority found that the Counties’ purpose was religious, not educational, given the nature of the Commandments as “an active symbol of religion [stating] ‘the religious duties of believers,’ ” Id., at 455. The judges in the majority understood the identical displays to emphasize “a single religious influence, with no mention of any other religious or secular influences,” id., at 454, and they took the very history of the litigation as evidence of the Counties’ religious objective, id., at 457.
Judge Ryan dissented on the basis of wide recognition that religion, and the Ten Commandments in particular, have played a foundational part in the evolution of American law and government; he saw no reason to gainsay the Counties’ claim of secular purposes. Id., at 472—473. The dissent denied that the prior displays should have any bearing on the constitutionality of the current one: a “history of unconstitutional displays can[not] be used as a sword to strike down an otherwise constitutional display.”8 Id., at 478.
Zec. 8:16-17
“These are the things you are able to do: speak the truth to each other; in your courts, administer justice that is true and conductive to peace; don’t plot harm against each other; and don’t love perjury; for these things I hate, says ADONAI.”
Blessings Steven
“In the past ADONAI-Tzv’ot said, ‘Administer true justice. Let everyone show mercy and compassion to his brother. Don’t oppress widows, orphans, foreigners or poor people. Don’t plot evil against each other.’ But they wouldn’t listen, they stubbornly turned their shoulder away and stopped up their ears, so that they wouldn’t have to hear it. Yes, they made their hearts as hard as a diamond, so that they wouldn’t hear the Torah and the messages that ADONAI-Tzva’ot had sent by his Spirit through the earlier prophets. This is why great anger came from ADONI-Tzava’ot and it came about that just as they hadn’t listened when he called, so ADONAI-Tzva’ot said, I wont listen when they call; but the power of a whirlwind I will disperse them among all nations which they have not known.
Zec. 8:3-16
Jerusalem will be called the city of “Truth”
The United States;
We hold these truths to be self evident but don’t display them, or teach them, or speak of them, to anyone or the AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION will sue you.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
________________________________________
No. 03—1693
McCREARY COUNTY, KENTUCKY, et al., PETI-
TIONERS v. AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES
UNION OF KENTUCKY et al.
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT
[June 27, 2005]
Justice Souter delivered the opinion of the Court.
Executives of two counties posted a version of the Ten Commandments on the walls of their courthouses. After suits were filed charging violations of the Establishment Clause, the legislative body of each county adopted a resolution calling for a more extensive exhibit meant to show that the Commandments are Kentucky’s “precedent legal code,” Def. Exh. 1 in Memorandum in Support of Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss in Civ. A. No. 99—507, p. 1 (ED Ky.) (hereinafter Def. Exh. 1). The result in each instance was a modified display of the Commandments surrounded by texts containing religious references as their sole common element. After changing counsel, the counties revised the exhibits again by eliminating some documents, expanding the text set out in another, and adding some new ones.
The issues are whether a determination of the counties’ purpose is a sound basis for ruling on the Establishment Clause complaints, and whether evaluation of the counties’ claim of secular purpose for the ultimate displays may take their evolution into account. We hold that the counties’ manifest objective may be dispositive of the constitutional enquiry, and that the development of the presentation should be considered when determining its purpose.
I
In the summer of 1999, petitioners McCreary County and Pulaski County, Kentucky (hereinafter Counties), put up in their respective courthouses large, gold-framed copies of an abridged text of the King James version of the Ten Commandments, including a citation to the Book of Exodus.1 In McCreary County, the placement of the Commandments responded to an order of the county legislative body requiring “the display [to] be posted in ‘a very high traffic area’ of the courthouse.” 96 F. Supp. 2d 679, 684 (ED Ky. 2000). In Pulaski County, amidst reported controversy over the propriety of the display, the Commandments were hung in a ceremony presided over by the county Judge-Executive, who called them “good rules to live by” and who recounted the story of an astronaut who became convinced “there must be a divine God” after viewing the Earth from the moon. Dodson, Commonwealth Journal, Jul. 25, 1999, p. A1, col. 2, in Memorandum in Support of Plaintiffs’ Motion for Preliminary Injunction in Civ. A. No. 99—509 (ED Ky.) (internal quotation marks omitted). The Judge-Executive was accompanied by the pastor of his church, who called the Commandments “a creed of ethics” and told the press after the ceremony that displaying the Commandments was “one of the greatest things the judge could have done to close out the millennium.” Id., at A2, col. 3 (internal quotation marks omitted). In both counties, this was the version of the Commandments posted:
“Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven images.
“Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.
“Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
“Honor thy father and thy mother.
“Thou shalt not kill.
“Thou shalt not commit adultery.
“Thou shalt not steal.
“Thou shalt not bear false witness.
“Thou shalt not covet.
“Exodus 20:3—17.”2 Def. Exh. 9 in Memorandum in Support of Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss in Civ. A. No. 99—507 (ED Ky.) (hereinafter Def. Exh. 9).
In each county, the hallway display was “readily visible to … county citizens who use the courthouse to conduct their civic business, to obtain or renew driver’s licenses and permits, to register cars, to pay local taxes, and to register to vote.” 96 F. Supp. 2d., at 684; American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky v. Pulaski County, Kentucky, 96 F. Supp. 2d 691, 695 (ED Ky. 2000).
In November 1999, respondents American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky et al. sued the Counties in Federal District Court under Rev. Stat. §1979, 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and sought a preliminary injunction against maintaining the displays, which the ACLU charged were violations of the prohibition of religious establishment included in the First Amendment of the Constitution.3 Within a month, and before the District Court had responded to the request for injunction, the legislative body of each County authorized a second, expanded display, by nearly identical resolutions reciting that the Ten Commandments are “the precedent legal code upon which the civil and criminal codes of … Kentucky are founded,” and stating several grounds for taking that position: that “the Ten Commandments are codified in Kentucky’s civil and criminal laws”; that the Kentucky House of Representatives had in 1993 “voted unanimously … to adjourn … ‘in remembrance and honor of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Ethics’ ”; that the “County Judge and … magistrates agree with the arguments set out by Judge [Roy] Moore” in defense of his “display [of] the Ten Commandments in his courtroom”; and that the “Founding Father[s] [had an] explicit understanding of the duty of elected officials to publicly acknowledge God as the source of America’s strength and direction.” Def. Exh. 1, at 1—3, 6.
As directed by the resolutions, the Counties expanded the displays of the Ten Commandments in their locations, presumably along with copies of the resolution, which instructed that it, too, be posted, id., at 9. In addition to the first display’s large framed copy of the edited King James version of the Commandments,4 the second included eight other documents in smaller frames, each either having a religious theme or excerpted to highlight a religious element. The documents were the “endowed by their Creator” passage from the Declaration of Independence; the Preamble to the Constitution of Kentucky; the national motto, “In God We Trust”; a page from the Congressional Record of February 2, 1983, proclaiming the Year of the Bible and including a statement of the Ten Commandments; a proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln designating April 30, 1863, a National Day of Prayer and Humiliation; an excerpt from President Lincoln’s “Reply to Loyal Colored People of Baltimore upon Presentation of a Bible,” reading that “[t]he Bible is the best gift God has ever given to man”; a proclamation by President Reagan marking 1983 the Year of the Bible; and the Mayflower Compact. 96 F. Supp. 2d, at 684; 96 F. Supp. 2d, at 695—696.
After argument, the District Court entered a preliminary injunction on May 5, 2000, ordering that the “display … be removed from [each] County Courthouse IMMEDIATELY” and that no county official “erect or cause to be erected similar displays.” 96 F. Supp. 2d, at 691; 96 F. Supp. 2d, at 702—703. The court’s analysis of the situation followed the three-part formulation first stated in Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971). As to governmental purpose, it concluded that the original display “lack[ed] any secular purpose” because the Commandments “are a distinctly religious document, believed by many Christians and Jews to be the direct and revealed word of God.” 96 F. Supp. 2d, at 686; 96 F. Supp. 2d, at 698. Although the Counties had maintained that the original display was meant to be educational, “[t]he narrow scope of the display–a single religious text unaccompanied by any interpretation explaining its role as a foundational document–can hardly be said to present meaningfully the story of this country’s religious traditions.” 96 F. Supp. 2d, at 686—687; 96 F. Supp. 2d, at 698. The court found that the second version also “clearly lack[ed] a secular purpose” because the “Count[ies] narrowly tailored [their] selection of foundational documents to incorporate only those with specific references to Christianity.”5 96 F. Supp. 2d, at 687; 96 F. Supp. 2d, at 699.
The Counties filed a notice of appeal from the preliminary injunction but voluntarily dismissed it after hiring new lawyers. They then installed another display in each courthouse, the third within a year. No new resolution authorized this one, nor did the Counties repeal the resolutions that preceded the second. The posting consists of nine framed documents of equal size, one of them setting out the Ten Commandments explicitly identified as the “King James Version” at Exodus 20:3—17, 145 F. Supp. 2d 845, 847 (ED Ky. 2001) and quoted at greater length than before:
“Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water underneath the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.
“Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain: for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
“Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
“Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.
“Thou shalt not kill.
“Thou shalt not commit adultery.
“Thou shalt not steal.
“Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet th[y] neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is th[y] neighbour’s.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 189a.
Assembled with the Commandments are framed copies of the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the lyrics of the Star Spangled Banner, the Mayflower Compact, the National Motto, the Preamble to the Kentucky Constitution, and a picture of Lady Justice. The collection is entitled “The Foundations of American Law and Government Display” and each document comes with a statement about its historical and legal significance. The comment on the Ten Commandments reads:
“The Ten Commandments have profoundly influenced the formation of Western legal thought and the formation of our country. That influence is clearly seen in the Declaration of Independence, which declared that ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.’ The Ten Commandments provide the moral background of the Declaration of Independence and the foundation of our legal tradition.” Id., at 180a.
The ACLU moved to supplement the preliminary injunction to enjoin the Counties’ third display,6 and the Counties responded with several explanations for the new version, including desires “to demonstrate that the Ten Commandments were part of the foundation of American Law and Government” and “to educate the citizens of the county regarding some of the documents that played a significant role in the foundation of our system of law and government.” 145 F. Supp. 2d, at 848 (internal quotation marks omitted). The court, however, took the objective of proclaiming the Commandments’ foundational value as “a religious, rather than secular, purpose” under Stone v. Graham, 449 U.S. 39 (1980) (per curiam), 145 F. Supp. 2d, at 849, and found that the assertion that the Counties’ broader educational goals are secular “crumble[s] … upon an examination of the history of this litigation,” Ibid. In light of the Counties’ decision to post the Commandments by themselves in the first instance, contrary to Stone, and later to “accentuat[e]” the religious objective by surrounding the Commandments with “specific references to Christianity,” the District Court understood the Counties’ “clear” purpose as being to post the Commandments, not to educate.7 145 F. Supp. 2d, at 849—850 (internal quotation marks omitted).
As requested, the trial court supplemented the injunction, and a divided panel of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed. The Circuit majority stressed that under Stone, displaying the Commandments bespeaks a religious object unless they are integrated with other material so as to carry “a secular message,” 354 F.3d 438, 449 (2003). The majority judges saw no integration here because of a “lack of a demonstrated analytical or historical connection [between the Commandments and] the other documents.” Id., at 451. They noted in particular that the Counties offered no support for their claim that the Ten Commandments “provide[d] the moral backdrop” to the Declaration of Independence or otherwise “profoundly influenced” it. Ibid. (Internal quotation marks omitted). The majority found that the Counties’ purpose was religious, not educational, given the nature of the Commandments as “an active symbol of religion [stating] ‘the religious duties of believers,’ ” Id., at 455. The judges in the majority understood the identical displays to emphasize “a single religious influence, with no mention of any other religious or secular influences,” id., at 454, and they took the very history of the litigation as evidence of the Counties’ religious objective, id., at 457.
Judge Ryan dissented on the basis of wide recognition that religion, and the Ten Commandments in particular, have played a foundational part in the evolution of American law and government; he saw no reason to gainsay the Counties’ claim of secular purposes. Id., at 472—473. The dissent denied that the prior displays should have any bearing on the constitutionality of the current one: a “history of unconstitutional displays can[not] be used as a sword to strike down an otherwise constitutional display.”8 Id., at 478.
Zec. 8:16-17
“These are the things you are able to do: speak the truth to each other; in your courts, administer justice that is true and conductive to peace; don’t plot harm against each other; and don’t love perjury; for these things I hate, says ADONAI.”
Blessings Steven
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