U.S. Supreme Court Will Hear Utah Religious Display Case

Mar 31, 2008 by Jeff Robinson

Pleasant Grove City v. Summum To Be Considered

The highest court in the United States will now consider a lawsuit that started three years ago in Utah. KCPW's Jeff Robinson reports.

 

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear Pleasant Grove City v. Summum, after the Tenth Circuit ruled last year that Pleasant Grove had to accept a private monument from the Summum religion on public property alongside another private statue of the Ten Commandments.

"I think the message that the Supreme Court hopefully will send is that all religions should be treated fairly, and that government shouldn't be making judgment calls as to what religions should be displayed and shouldn't be displayed in a public park," says Salt Lake City civil rights attorney Brian Barnard.

Barnard is representing Summum, a Salt Lake City based religion started in 1975. He says he's not concerned that the Supreme Court has two additional conservative judges appointed by President Bush in the last few years. Barnard says the constitution doesn't give preference to any religion, regardless of how long it has been established.

Pleasant Grove is represented by conservative nonprofit American Center for Law and Justice. Attorney Edward White says ruling in favor of Summum would open up the door for hate groups to force cities to display their creeds. He cites Fred Phelps of the renowned anti-homosexual group the Westboro Baptist Church.

"He went to Casper, Wyoming, which happened to have a Fraternal Order of Eagles monument, and demanded that they put up a monument damning Matthew Shepard, who was a homosexual who was killed, damning him to hell," said White. "And what the city had to do was remove the monument that they had up, because they didn't want to be forced to put up this monument condemning someone to hell."

White adds that because Summum's original lawsuit was brought on the basis of free speech and not the establishment clause of the constitution, the group can't use an establishment clause argument when presenting its case before the Supreme Court.

Right now, the Ten Commandments monument still stands in Pleasant Grove. The city was able to obtain a stay of the Tenth Circuit court's order to either accept the Summum monument or remove the Christian monument until a higher court considered the ruling. Salt Lake County and Ogden elected to get rid of their Ten Commandments displays when faced with similar lawsuits. Duchesne got around it by selling the plot of land its display stood on.

Summum's attorney says the high court probably won't hear the case until at least October.

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