Washington – The Supreme Court won’t hear an appeal of a ruling that 12-foot-high crosses along Utah highways in honor of dead state troopers violate the Constitution.
Join our WhatsApp groupSubscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
The justices voted 8-1 Monday to reject an appeal from Utah and a state troopers’ group that wanted the court to throw out the ruling and take a more permissive view of religious symbols on public land.
Peter J. Eliasberg, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, said many Jewish war veterans would not want to be honored by “the predominant symbol of Christianity.”
Since 1998, the private Utah Highway Patrol Association has paid for and erected more than a dozen memorial crosses, most of them on state land. Texas-based American Atheists Inc. and three of its Utah members sued the state in 2005.
The federal appeals court in Denver said the crosses were an unconstitutional endorsement of Christianity by the Utah state government.
Justice Clarence Thomas issued a 19-page opinion dissenting from Monday’s order. Thomas said the case offered the court the opportunity to clear up confusion over its approach to disputes over the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, the prohibition against governmental endorsement of religion.
“Today the court rejects an opportunity to provide clarity to an Establishment Clause jurisprudence in shambles,” Thomas said.
Previous high court cases have made it difficult for lower courts to figure out what to do in this area and “rendered the constitutionality of displays of religious imagery on government property anyone’s guess,” he said.
Thomas referred specifically to a pair of 2005 cases about the Ten Commandments. On the same day, the court upheld a Ten Commandments monument on the grounds of the Texas state capitol in Austin and declared unconstitutional a display in the McCreary County courthouse in Kentucky.
This is a long overdue decision. Hopefully, it will put an end to the annual debate over whether to allow nativity scenes, menorahs and other “stuff” in public spaces. We can do our own parsunei nisah in our homes and shuls and we don’t need to use parks and city halls.
To #1 - Tell that to Chabad, which erects Menorahs in a number of state capitals, the U.S. Capitol building, at many public areas in NYC, and in other public areas across the USA, and throughout the world.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” “… or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”. On the one hand, how is this a “law” respecting an establishment of religion and on the other hand, can they find a more appropriate way to memorialize state troopers, like helping their widows and orphans, or doing things to promote better highway safety?
Can I have a minyan on the side of the road? Can they pray at the National Cathedral?
Thomas is right that the court really needs to clear this up, although taking the case might instead have led to even more confusion.
#7 your hate for ehrliche shomreo torah mitzvos yidden shine thru again(your last 2 lines, you dont fail to dissappoint me). The founding fathers were not so so educated. They were educated, period. By the way the founding fatheres would turn over in thier grave to see what freedom is allowed under the excues of’ what the founding fathers meant….
#11 and he will reply according to his twisted leftist brain(i judge him according to your posts all over)
#5 wrong,if he is a yid the yiddish spark might be ignited which is bklall no shayech legabay a nativety scene.