Opinion ID: 3051508
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: McCreary County v. ACLU

Text: [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the course of litigation, the counties altered the displays twice, each time adding to them arguably greater secular or historical content.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