U.S. Supreme Court
Supreme Court to Decide Dispute Over Display of ‘Seven Aphorisms’
Posted Mar 31, 2008, 10:57 am CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case involving a Utah city’s effort to ban a monument in a public park donated by a religious group known as Summum.
The group wanted to place a monument to the "Seven Aphorisms of Summum" in a park where a donated Ten Commandments monument is already on display, the Associated Press reports. The 10th U.S Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled the park became a forum for private speech after the government accepted the Ten Commandments monument, and it could not discriminate based on viewpoints of donors.
In its cert petition (PDF posted by SCOTUSblog), Pleasant Grove City, Utah, contends the 10th Circuit ruling puts cities in an uncomfortable position. “A city cannot accept a monument posthumously honoring a war hero without also being prepared to accept a monument that lampoons that same hero," the petition says. "Nor may a city accept a display that positively portrays Native American culture unless it is prepared to accept another that disparages that culture.”
The petition argues the Ten Commandments monument is public property, and no forum for private speech was created.
The city is represented by Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice. "The government has to be neutral toward private speech, but it does not have to be neutral in its own speech," says a press release issued by ACLJ.
Summum adherents claim Moses actually received two sets of tablets on Mount Sinai—one was the Ten Commandments and the other was the Seven Aphorisms.
The case is Pleasant Grove City v. Summum.