Kentucky, 21 October 2009: An attorney for two Kentucky counties tried to persuade a federal appeals court Tuesday that its officials have had a change of heart over the past decade — that even if their original motive was religious when they posted the Ten Commandments in county courthouses, it isn’t anymore.
McCreary and Pulaski counties now have only secular motives to educate the public about the role of the commandments and other documents in American history, attorney Mathew Staver told the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati Tuesday.

Staver argued that the displays should go back up — eight years after a district court judge issued a temporary injunction against the displays and four years after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed on the grounds that county officials clearly and unconstitutionally wanted to promote religion. The issue is back on appeal because the district court has made the injunction permanent.

County officials “have done everything possible to wipe away the past,” Staver said. “They have indicated their purpose is completely and wholly secular.”

More than 100 residents from McCreary and Pulaski counties attended the hearing in support of the counties’ case, many of them riding church buses on the roughly three-hour trip to Cincinnati from southeastern Kentucky. They watched as the opposing attorneys made telephone arguments to a three-judge panel.

An attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky said the counties are trying to pull a fast one.

Stating a secular motive does not change 10 years of history that clearly show a religious purpose behind that display and two previous ones, according to ACLU lawyer David Friedman.

“We have to look at the rest of the history, and the history shows a blatantly sectarian purpose,” he said. Even though the counties last year passed resolutions repudiating any religious motives and declaring only educational ones, Friedman said those votes were driven by a lawyer telling a client, “You’ve got a better chance of winning if you do this.”
At issue is a decade’s worth of efforts by county officials to display the commandments in some form — first as a standalone exhibit and then alongside other religious documents, with county officials paying tribute to God as the foundation of American strength and Jesus Christ as the “Prince of Ethics.”
After lower courts forbid those displays, the counties installed exhibits called the Foundations of American Law and Government, which includes the Ten Commandments alongside other documents, including the U.S. Constitution, the Mayflower Compact and the Magna Carta.

A lower court issued a temporary injunction on that display, and a divided Supreme Court agreed in 2005, saying that county officials’ public statements clearly showed their effort was an unconstitutional government promotion of religion.

The 6th Circuit and other lower courts have since allowed identical displays in other counties in Kentucky and Indiana if there was no track record of religious motives.

However, U.S. District Judge Jennifer Coffman of the Eastern District of Kentucky made the injunctions against the McCreary and Pulaski displays permanent in 2008 — citing no evidence of a change in religious motives.

Staver disagreed. He said officials in McCreary and Pulaski counties have “repudiated” their previous displays and now endorse the one that includes the other historic documents.

“I don’t know what else these county officials can do,” Staver said. “The county abandoned the first two displays. … They have wiped the past away.”

Sixth Circuit judges James Ryan, Julia Smith Gibbons and Eric Clay questioned lawyers on both sides.

Clay told Staver the Ten Commandments cases that have been upheld involved a “history of a secular purpose,” rather than the emphasis on religion found in the Kentucky cases.

But Ryan asked Friedman how the counties could ever be in compliance with the constitution if their motives always will be in question. “Your position is that they’re just lying, they’re fakers,” he said.

The judges are expected to rule in the next few months.

Source: http://www.courier-journal.com

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