10 Commandments up in air in Pleasant Grove

A Ten Commandments monument on city property in Pleasant Grove may not be appropriate after all, given recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings on the monoliths, a federal appeals court has ruled.

On Monday, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sent a case challenging the constitutionality of the Pleasant Grove monument back to Utah's federal court for further consideration of an earlier decision upholding its presence in the city park.

The Society of Separationists sued the city in September 2003, alleging the display of the monolith in Pleasant Grove City Park unconstitutionally endorses one religion over another.

The U.S. Supreme Court in June handed down decisions in two cases challenging the monuments — allowing one display outside the Texas State Capitol to remain but rejecting framed copies of the Ten Commandments inside a Kentucky courthouse.

In both decisions, the justices said there should be no blanket rule on the monuments but rather the issue should be handled on a case-by-case basis. As long as the display does not appear to endorse religion, such displays are appropriate, the high court said.

In light of those decisions, the 10th Circuit on Monday ordered U.S. District Judge Bruce Jenkins to reconsider his May 2004 ruling allowing the Pleasant Grove display to stand. Jenkins, upholding a 1973 ruling from the 10th Circuit, found that the Ten Commandments were largely secular and that "neither its purpose or effect tends to establish religious belief."

However, the appeals court noted, the recent U.S. Supreme Court action supersedes that earlier decision, and the Pleasant Grove matter needs additional fact-finding to determine why the monument was initially placed in the park.

"This says: Look at all the facts and try and divine the purpose and the goal of the government entity that was involved," Society of Separationists attorney Brian Barnard said Monday.

Under the Supreme Court rulings, a Ten Commandments monument is appropriate only if it can be shown it was not erected to promote religion.

Jenkins, in his May 2004 decision, determined that Ten Commandments displays are not religious in nature.

"No one and no religion has an exclusive claim to the icons of history. History belongs to all," the judge wrote. "The placement and display of the monolith at issue in this case is primarily secular in purpose, as an acknowledgment of one historic source of guidance and direction, one time-honored source of standards of human conduct."