Around the states

Church & State, Nov 2002

Court Rules Against Commandments Display In Kentucky

A federal appeals court has ruled that the state of Kentucky may not legally endorse the Ten Commandments with a monument on the Capitol grounds.

On Oct. 9, the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the First Amendment's separation of church and state prohibits the state from promoting the religious code on state property.

The controversy has been ongoing for decades. A Commandments monument was originally erected in 1971 after the Fraternal Order of Eagles donated it to the state. It was removed in 1988 to make way for a new heating and cooling plant. Two years ago, the Kentucky legislature passed a resolution calling on the state to get the tablet out of storage and erect it on the capitol lawn in Frankfort.

A lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky and several local religious leaders successfully challenged the effort to re-erect the religious display. Supporters of government-sponsored religion hoped to alleviate constitutional concerns by featuring the Decalogue with other historical texts, but in Adland v. Russ, the 6th Circuit rejected the plan.

"In our view, this indicates that the other components of the display are an afterthought, at best, secondary in importance to the Ten Commandments, and suggests that the Commonwealth acted with a predominantly religious purpose," Chief Judge Boyce Martin wrote for the court majority.

The decision will send lawmakers back to the drawing board to create a new way to promote the Commandments on government property. Sen. Albert Robinson (R-London), who sponsored the original monument resolution, told the Associated Press, "We think this will help us to start over."

Ohio Education Board Strikes Compromise On Science

After months of intense political debate, the Ohio Board of Education announced Oct. 15 that it will adopt a new science curriculum that allows local school districts to teach evolutionary biology and about the alleged "controversy" surrounding human origins.

The unanimous board vote approves a policy that will encourage public school science teachers to offer lessons on evolution, widely accepted around the world as the bedrock of modern biology, and information on why some critics oppose evolution. Teachers will not be required to follow the standards, but will have little choice because Ohio's new student achievement tests will be based on them.

The vote followed months of contentious debate on the issue. In 2001, after scrapping the state's old science curriculum - described by some researchers as "totally useless" - a committee of scholars and citizens prepared new science standards. While they were praised by educators, Religious Right activists and creationism advocates rallied political opposition to the standards because they lacked references to religion.

Board member Michael Cochran, part of the five-member panel that approved the new standards, told the Associated Press that he considers the new policy a "compromise."

Both sides are claiming at least partial success. Patricia Princehouse, a Case Western Reserve University professor with Ohio Citizens for Science, which opposes religious lessons in science classes, told reporters the new policy is appropriate.

"The standards are tremendous," Princehouse said, "and they don't open the door to intelligent design."

Meanwhile, James Dobson's Focus on the Family, which opposes church-state separation, also praised the new science standards, saying the policy represents a "hit" against evolution and "opens the door to a critique of evolutionary theory" that might include creationism.

Mormon Church Can't Stop Main Street Speech, Court Rules

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does not

have the right to curb free speech inside a Main Street Plaza that it now owns, a federal appeals court has ruled.

Salt Lake City sold the downtown property to the church in 2000 for $8.1 million. The Mormon Church already had a visitors' center in the area and turned the remaining property, including what was part of the city's Main Street, into a pedestrian plaza. Once the sale was complete, the church restricted any "offensive, indecent, obscene, vulgar, lewd or disorderly speech" and banned smoking, sunbathing and loud radios. Religious proselytism is limited to Mormon missionaries.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the First Unitarian Church in Salt Lake City sued to challenge the restrictions, arguing they ran afoul of the First Amendment. A lower court sided with the Mormon Church and concluded that the area is private property where speech could legally be curtailed.

In a unanimous ruling issued Oct. 9, the appeals court disagreed.

"The city cannot take action that runs afoul of our first and primary amendment," the court said in First Unitarian Church v. Salt Lake City. "The city cannot create a `First Amendmentfree zone.' Their attempt to do so must fail."

Lawyers for the Mormon Church have announced their intention to appeal.

TV Preacher Falwell To Create 'Christian' Law School