Opinion ID: 3051508
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Recent Developments in Ten Commandments Law

Text: Fast-forward twenty-five years to the year 2005, when the Court again struggled with the Lemon test as applied to governmental displays on public property of the inherently religious and definitively non-secular Ten Commandments. See Van Orden, 545 U.S. at 704-05 (Breyer, J., concurring in the judgment) (holding the Texas display constitutional); McCreary, 545 U.S. at 858 (holding the Kentucky display unconstitutional). Confounded by the ten individual opinions in the two cases, and perhaps inspired by the Biblical milieu, courts have described the current state of the law as both “Establishment Clause purgatory,” ACLU v. Mercer County, 432 F.3d 624, 636 (6th Cir. 2005), and “Limbo,” Green v. Bd. of County Comm’rs, 450 F. Supp. 2d 1273, 1285 (E.D. Okla. 2006). Standing at the intersection of Van Orden and McCreary for the first time, the path we must follow is clear.9 Our study of the cases leads us to two conclusions. First, that the threepart test set forth in Lemon and modified in Agostini remains the general rule for evaluating whether an Establishment 9 Some courts have applied both the Van Orden and the Lemon analysis in Eagles monument cases. See ACLU Neb. Found. v. City of Plattsmouth, 419 F.3d 772, 778 n.8 (8th Cir. 2005) (en banc) (applying Van Orden, but then asserting in a footnote that the same decision would result under Lemon); ACLU of Ohio Found. v. Bd. of Comm’rs, 444 F. Supp. 2d 805, 816 (N.D. Ohio 2006) (applying both Lemon and Van Orden). But see Twombly v. City of Fargo, 388 F. Supp. 2d 983, 986-90 (D.N.D. 2005) (applying only Van Orden). CARD v. CITY OF EVERETT 3027 Clause violation exists. See McCreary, 545 U.S. at 859; see also Vasquez v. Los Angeles County, 487 F.3d 1246, 1254-55 (9th Cir. 2007) (holding that McCreary reaffirms Lemon), cert. denied, 128 S. Ct. 711 (2007). Second, that we do not use the Lemon test to determine the constitutionality of some longstanding plainly religious displays that convey a historical or secular message in a nonreligious context. As Justice Breyer stated in Van Orden, If the relation between government and religion is one of separation, but not of mutual hostility and suspicion, one will inevitably find difficult borderline cases. And in such cases, I see no test-related substitute for the exercise of legal judgment. . . . Rather, to determine the message that the text here conveys, we must examine how the text is used. And that inquiry requires us to consider the context of the display. 545 U.S. at 700-01 (Breyer, J., concurring in the judgment). Similarly, as Chief Justice Rehnquist stated in the plurality opinion, Whatever may be the fate of the Lemon test in the larger scheme of Establishment Clause jurispru- dence, we think it not useful in dealing with the sort of passive monument that Texas has erected on its Capitol grounds. Instead, our analysis is driven both by the nature of the monument and by our Nation’s history. Id. at 686 (plurality opinion). Therefore, we must examine both McCreary and Van Orden, and exercise our legal judgment to determine whether Everett’s monument to the Commandments passes constitutional muster. 3028 CARD v. CITY OF EVERETT
[3] In McCreary, the Court invalidated displays of the Ten Commandments in two Kentucky courthouses. 545 U.S. at 858. The displays were at first simply “large, gold-framed copies of an abridged text of the King James version of the Ten Commandments, including a citation to the Book of Exodus.” Id. at 851. In the course of litigation, the counties altered the displays twice, each time adding to them arguably greater secular or historical content. Id. at 853-56. The majority applied the Lemon test, focusing heavily on the question of the counties’ purpose. Id. at 862 (“[A]n understanding of official objective emerges from readily discoverable fact, without any judicial psychoanalysis of a drafter’s heart of hearts.”). The Court explained that “[t]he point is simply that the original text [of the Ten Commandments] viewed in its entirety is an unmistakably religious statement dealing with religious obligations and with morality subject to religious sanction. When the government initiates an effort to place this statement alone in public view, a religious object is unmistakable.” Id. at 869. For this reason, the first display failed under the secular purpose prong of Lemon, as it must. See Stone, 449 U.S. at 39-43. In examining and invalidating the two subsequent versions, the Court rejected the county’s claim that they evinced a secular purpose, because purpose must be evaluated as if by “one presumed to be familiar with the history of the government’s actions and competent to learn what history has to show.” McCreary, 545 U.S. at 866; see also id. at 874 (“[A]n implausible claim that governmental purpose has changed should not carry the day in a court of law any more than in a head with common sense.”). There can be little doubt after McCreary not only that Lemon is still alive but that the secular purpose inquiry has been fortified. See id. at 900-03 (Scalia, J., dissenting). CARD v. CITY OF EVERETT 3029
In Van Orden, the Supreme Court’s contemporaneous exegesis, neither the plurality nor Justice Breyer’s vital concurrence in the judgment reaches its result by applying Lemon. 545 U.S. at 686 (plurality opinion) (“[W]e think [Lemon is] not useful in dealing with the sort of passive monument that Texas has erected on its Capitol grounds.”); id. at 700 (Breyer, J., concurring in the judgment) (“While the Court’s prior tests . . . might well lead to the same result the Court reaches today[,] no exact formula can dictate a resolution to such fact-intensive cases.”) (citation omitted).10 As we have discussed, the Van Orden decision is not the first time that the Court has decided that the Lemon test was not applicable in an Establishment Clause case. See, e.g., Marsh, 463 U.S. at 791, 795. Because the Supreme Court issued McCreary, broadly espousing Lemon, contemporaneously with Van Orden, narrowly eschewing Lemon, we must read the latter as carving out an exception for certain Ten Commandments displays. We cannot say how narrow or broad the “exception” may ultimately be; not all Ten Commandments displays will fit within the exception articulated by Justice Breyer. However, we can say that the exception at least includes the display of the Ten Commandments at issue here. 10 The Court’s plurality opinion avoided the purpose inquiry, holding that, due to the “passive” nature of the Texas Decalogue, the Court only need consider the history and context of the display to determine that it passed constitutional scrutiny. Van Orden, 545 U.S. at 691 (plurality opinion). However, the controlling opinion in Van Orden is, of course, that of Justice Breyer. “When a fragmented Court decides a case and no single rationale explaining the result enjoys the assent of five Justices, ‘the holding of the Court may be viewed as that position taken by those Members who concurred in the judgments on the narrowest grounds . . . .’ ” Marks v. United States, 430 U.S. 188, 193 (1977) (quoting Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 169 n.15 (1976)); see United States v. Williams, 435 F.3d 1148, 1157 n.9 (9th Cir. 2006) (“Applying Marks’ rule, we have often construed one Justice’s concurring opinion as representing a logical subset of the plurality’s and as adopting a holding that would affect a narrower range of cases than that of the plurality.”). 3030 CARD v. CITY OF EVERETT Van Orden involved a challenge to an Eagles-donated monolith on the grounds of the Texas Capitol.11 The Capitol is surrounded by twenty-two acres of land, which “contain 17 monuments and 21 historical markers commemorating the ‘people, ideals, and events that compose Texan identity.’ ”12 545 U.S. at 681 (quoting Tex. H. Con. Res. 38, 77th Leg., Reg. Sess. (2001)).13 The Texas monument is identical to the Everett monument, save for the dedication at the base which reads “PRESENTED TO THE PEOPLE AND YOUTH OF TEXAS BY THE FRATERNAL ORDER OF EAGLES OF TEXAS 1961.” Id. at 681-82. “The legislative record surrounding the State’s acceptance of the monument from the Eagles . . . is limited to legislative journal entries.” Id. at 682. While the State selected the location where it was placed, “[t]he Eagles paid the cost of erecting the monument, the dedication of which was presided over by two state legislators.” Id. Justice Breyer based his reasoning “upon consideration of the basic purposes of the First Amendment’s Religion Clauses themselves.” Id. at 703-04 (Breyer, J., concurring in the judgment). He stressed that in “difficult borderline cases,” there is “no test-related substitute for the exercise of legal judgment.” Id. at 700. Further, such analysis, to “remain faithful to the underlying purposes of the Clauses . . . must take account of context and consequences measured in light of those pur11