A federal appeals court has ordered the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court to remove a monument engraved with the Ten Commandments from the rotunda of his courthouse
http://www.iht.com - Thursday, July 3, 2003 - The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in Atlanta, concluded that the monument violates the First Amendment's prohibition on government establishment of religion.
In its ruling Tuesday, the court was unusually blunt in responding to the assertion by Chief Justice Roy Moore in court papers in the case that he did not recognize the authority of the federal court in this matter.
The appeals court compared Moore to "those southern governors who attempted to defy federal court orders during an earlier era," likening him to such states' rights proponents of segregation as George Wallace and Ross Barnett, governors respectively of Alabama and Mississippi.
In the 1950s and 1960s, federal courts ordered them and other southern officials not to interfere with school desegregation and protest marches.
"Any notion of high government officials being above the law did not save those governors from having to obey federal court orders," Judge Ed Carnes wrote for the appeals court, "and it will not save this chief justice from having to comply with the court order in this case."
The appeals court did not set a timetable for removal of the monument. Moore's lawyer, Herbert Titus, said the case was not over. "We're not giving up," Titus said. "We are going to file a petition for review in the United States Supreme Court."
Titus declined to say whether Moore would comply with the order if the Supreme Court declines to hear the case or affirms the order.
"We're not making predictions or forecasts," Titus said, adding that the chief justice "believes that what he is doing is not only constitutional but required by his oath of office."
The appeals court's decision was unanimous, but Chief Judge J.L. Edmondson concurred only in the result, not the decision's reasoning. He did not explain why.
Richard Story, a visiting district court judge from Atlanta, was the third member of the panel.
The granite monument setting out the Ten Commandments was erected in August 2001 as the centerpiece of the rotunda of the Alabama State Judicial Building.
Three lawyers who found the monument offensive sued to have it removed. In November, Judge Myron Thompson of the U.S. District Court in Montgomery ruled in their favor.
Moore has been closely associated with the Ten Commandments through his career on the Alabama bench.
He hung a hand-carved plaque depicting the commandments in his courtroom when he was a circuit court judge in Gadsden, Alabama, generating controversy and lawsuits. In 2000, he successfully campaigned for chief justice as the "Ten Commandments Judge."
The court noted that the excerpts from Exodus chiseled into the tablets are one Protestant version of the commandments.
"Jewish, Catholic, Lutheran and Eastern Orthodox faiths use different parts of their holy texts as the authoritative Ten Commandments," the court said. "The point is that choosing which version of the Ten Commandments to display can have religious endorsement implications."
The appeals court made it clear that it will not brook disobedience from Moore if its order is upheld. "We do expect that if he is unable to have the district court's order overturned through the usual appellate processes," Carnes wrote, "when the time comes Chief Justice Moore will obey that order. If necessary, the court order will be enforced. The rule of law will prevail."