Judgment Day at hand — for 10 Commandments

WASHINGTON — Sometime in late winter, advocates for and opponents of public displays of the Ten Commandments will argue the issue before the U.S. Supreme Court for the first time in 25 years.

Litigators on both sides agree that the justices probably will set parameters on what constitutes an acceptable display of the commandments, relying partly on the court's previous decisions on the display of Nativity scenes in town squares and courthouses.

They disagree, however, on whether the existence of different versions of the Ten Commandments — reflecting theological differences among Protestants, Catholics and Jews — will or should affect the court's decision.

"No doubt it's something I'm going to emphasize," said Erwin Chemerinsky, a Duke University constitutional scholar who will appear before the court on behalf of Thomas Van Orden, a homeless man and former defense lawyer who for several years has been fighting to have a six-foot granite monument of the commandments removed from the statehouse grounds in Texas.

"My argument in part is: Is there 'a' Ten Commandments?" Chemerinsky said. If such monuments are allowed, the "choice of which one to use is a religious choice."

But Mat Staver, president and general counsel for Liberty Counsel, based in Orlando, Fla., which is representing two Kentucky jurisdictions whose framed commandment displays were ordered removed from courthouses, said, "The issue of different versions is a red herring." The King James-based list posted in the courthouses was "no one's version," he said, arguing that it — like all renderings — was an abbreviated form of biblical passages.

That debate will be part of a broader First Amendment argument over whether the displays constitute government endorsement of religion or government allowance of the free expression of religion.

The court last addressed the Decalogue issue in 1980, when it struck down, 5-4, a Kentucky law that required the posting of the commandments in public school classrooms. The court ruled that the law had "no secular legislative purpose."

Since then, advocates of church-state separation have clashed with those who argue that the 1980 ruling does not prohibit all government-backed displays of the commandments. Dozens of cases have worked their way through lower courts, and many have been appealed to the Supreme Court without success.

Last week, the court decided to hear the Kentucky and Texas cases.