The recent oral arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court regarding a small religious group’s desire to display a monument in a city park may have implications for questions of free speech and the establishment of religion in public schools. Summum, a sect based in Utah, is seeking to place a stone monument in a public park in Pleasant Grove City, Utah, which will showcase its principles known as the "Seven Aphorisms." These principles center around concepts such as "vibration," "opposition," and "rhythm," and the group believes it is their right to have the monument displayed alongside other permanent items in the park.
However, the city of Pleasant Grove rejected Summum’s request, stating that permanent additions to the park must be relevant to the city’s history or donated by a group with strong ties to the community. This led to a lawsuit arguing primarily on grounds of the First Amendment’s protection of free speech. The lawyer representing Summum emphasized that the city allowed the Fraternal Order of Eagles to display the Ten Commandments in the park, but denied Summum the same opportunity to display their faith’s principles. According to the lawyer, this action violates the core principle of free speech that the government should not favor one message over another in a public forum.
On the other hand, the lawyer representing Pleasant Grove City argued that a federal appeals court was mistaken in ruling in favor of Summum. The appeals court had considered the city’s acceptance of various permanent displays as creating a public forum protected under the First Amendment. However, the city’s lawyer pointed out that all the monuments on display had been selected, owned, controlled, and displayed by the government. Therefore, when the government is the speaker, it should not be subjected to the traditional constraints of the First Amendment’s protection of free speech.
Several groups filed briefs in support of either side of the case. Some of these briefs brought up similar situations in public schools that could be relevant. One case mentioned involved parents who were denied permission to include religious messages on memorial tiles at Columbine High School. The court ruled that the tile project constituted school-sponsored speech, and the school officials were not guilty of viewpoint discrimination when they prohibited religious messages. Another case discussed a challenge to the Texas state board of education’s approval of textbooks by an author whose science text had been rejected. The court held that the textbook-approval process was the state’s expression, rather than the author’s.
One conservative legal group, Liberty Counsel, filed a brief supporting Pleasant Grove City. They argued that when the government is speaking on its own property, it has the right to prevent others from speaking as well. They expressed concern that if the court rules in favor of Summum, it could set a precedent requiring teachers to allow private speakers with opposing messages in their classrooms whenever they express disapproval of a certain behavior, such as smoking. Furthermore, any case involving the Ten Commandments is potentially significant for educators, as there are ongoing efforts, both by private groups and schools themselves, to find constitutional ways to display the Ten Commandments in public schools.
Message of Conflicting Views
Back in 2005, the Supreme Court conveyed a message that was difficult to interpret, as they made contradictory rulings on the display of Ten Commandments monuments. While they upheld the display of a civic-donated monument akin to the one in Pleasant Grove City, they struck down similar displays in two courthouses due to their religious motivations.
These two decisions, namely McCreary County v. American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky and Van Orden v. Perry, did not affect the court’s prior ruling in Stone v. Graham from 1980. In the Stone v. Graham case, the court invalidated a Kentucky law that mandated the display of the commandments in public schools. Therefore, the validity of that ruling remained intact even with the mixed message from the recent decisions.
During the proceedings, Ms. Harris, the attorney representing Summum, made an effort to persuade the justices that the religious monuments should not be seen as the government’s own message. She argued that due to the legal intricacies surrounding Ten Commandments monuments, the average citizen would likely view them as forms of private speech rather than government endorsement of religious beliefs.
