Why Ten Commandments Displays on Government Property are Unconstitutional; The Supreme Court Hears Oral Arguments in Two Ten Commandments Cases. What is This Issue About and Why should We Care‪?‬

On December 13, 2004, seventeen national religious and secular organizations filed a joint friend of the court brief to the U.S. Supreme Court addressing the two Ten Commandments cases the Court is scheduled to begin hearing March 2, 2005, with a ruling expected sometime in the fall. The signatories to the brief are the American Humanist Association (publisher of the Humanist), the American Ethical Union, the Association of Humanistic Rabbis, Atheist Alliance International, the Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans, Equal Partners in Faith, the Humanist Society, the Humanist Institute, HUUmanists, the Institute for Humanist Studies, the International Humanist and Ethical Union, Internet Infidels, the National Center for Science Education, the Secular Coalition for America, Skeptics Society, the Society for Humanistic Judaism, and the Unitarian Universalist Association. The first case, Thomas van Orden v. Texas Governor Rick Perry, deals with whether a six-foot-tall red granite monument depicting the Ten Commandments, erected on the grounds of the state capitol of Texas, is an unconstitutional attempt to establish state sponsored religion. The second case, McCreary County v. American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, involves the "Foundations of Law" displays in the McCreary and Pulaski county courthouses that include the Ten Commandments alongside nine historical and legal documents as a "sampling of documents that influenced American law and government."