Court rules for Utah city in religious marker case
WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Wednesday that a Utah city that has long permitted a Ten Commandments monument in its city park need not accept the Summum church's Seven Aphorisms monument.
The justices reversed a lower court decision that said once Pleasant Grove had allowed the Ten Commandments marker and several historical artifacts in its Pioneer Park, it had created a "public forum" where other groups' markers and messages must be permitted.
Supreme Court justices said that such rationale does not apply in a dispute over permanent monuments.
The case had been closely watched by numerous cities and municipal groups. Some, such as New York City, had warned that the lower court decision could result in cluttered monument grounds.
Writing for the court, Justice Samuel Alito said placement of a permanent marker on public grounds represents a type of government speech. That gives a city the latitude to say essentially what it wants, rather than open the grounds to all comers.
Alito noted that the lower court had regarded the small Pleasant Grove park as an open forum. "We conclude, however, that although a park is a traditional public forum for speeches and other transitory expressive acts, the display of a permanent monument in a public park is not" such a public forum.
One legal organization that had submitted arguments in the case applauded the court decision in a statement released this afternoon.
Although the case was brought by a religious group, it was a test of the First Amendment's free speech guarantee and did not involve a challenge to the Constitution's requisite separation of church and state. The court has long struggled with those rules for public display of religious artifacts and generally allowed long-established Ten Commandments markers to remain on municipal grounds.
Today's decision was unanimous, but some justices wrote separately to expand on the free-speech analysis and to raise questions about how church-state principles may or may not lurk in a subsequent challenge to Pleasant Grove's monument grounds.
"This decision represents a resounding victory for government speech," Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the Washington-based American Center for Law and Justice, said in a statement.
"The critical question before the court: Can a city decide which permanent, unattended monuments, if any, to install on city property? Without dissent, the court said, 'Yes,' " Sekulow wrote. "We're delighted that the court upheld the important distinction between government speech and private speech."
The dispute began in 2003 when Summum sought to erect a monument to its seven principles, or aphorisms, in Pioneer Park. Summum, founded in 1975 and headquartered in Salt Lake City, adopts Egyptian customs, such as mummification, with elements of Gnostic Christianity that teach spiritual knowledge is experiential.
City officials rejected the request, saying they wanted only monuments that related to Pleasant Grove history or were donated by groups with longstanding ties to the community. The Ten Commandments monument had been donated by the Fraternal Order of Eagles in 1971.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit said the action violated Summum's free-speech rights. Rejecting the 10th Circuit's reasoning, Alito wrote, "We think it is fair to say that throughout our nation's history, the general government practice with respect to donated monuments has been one of selective receptivity."
Alito heeded local governments' claims that they could face a deluge of requests for space on their grounds.
"Every jurisdiction that has accepted a donated war memorial may be asked to provide equal treatment for a donated monument questioning the cause for which the veterans fought," he wrote. "New York City, having accepted a donated statue of one heroic dog (Balto, the sled dog who brought medicine to Nome, Alaska, during a diphtheria epidemic) may be pressed to accept monuments for other dogs who are claimed to be equally worthy of commemoration."