First Liberty Institute is fighting a pair of bans on religious displays at state capitols. One ruling barred a Ten Commandments monument on Arkansas Capitol grounds and another blocked a Nativity display inside the Connecticut Capitol.
In March, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas cited First Amendment violations in ordering a Ten Commandments monument removed from state Capitol grounds in Little Rock. The legislature approved the monument in 2015. The court decision stems from a lawsuit filed by The Satanic Temple, Freedom from Religion Foundation, American Humanist Association and the Arkansas Society of Freethinkers.
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Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin (R) and First Liberty Institute this week asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit to reverse the decision, arguing that the monument is a staple representation of the Ten Commandments’ influence on U.S. law.
In its opening brief, First Liberty says the appellate ruling ignores the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (2022), in which the high court upheld the First Amendment rights of Washington high school football coach Joe Kennedy. The coach had been suspended for praying on the field after games.
First Liberty wrote that the district court “wrongly held” that the “monument violated the Establishment Clause under myriad tests, including the overruled test in Lemon v. Kurtzman,” in which the court upheld the First Amendment rights of the public high school football coach.
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EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Hannah Davis and originally published by Decision Magazine.
