Court Opinion

ID: 9809707
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 21:22:20.583911+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:51:39.508295
License: Public Domain

EDMONDSON, J.,
Concurring in denial of rehearing.
1 The Attorney General's historical argument is incorrect, The origin of Okla. Const. Art, 2 § 5 is with Thomas Jefferson and the example set by the People of Virginia and not the 1876 Blaine Amendment. See Connell v. Gray, 1912 OK 607, 33 Okla. 591, 127 P. 417, 420, where the Court discussed the connection between Art. 2 § 5 and a 1786 Virginia statute. See also R.L. Williams, The Constitution of Oklahoma and Enabling Act: Annotated with References to the Constitution, Statutes and Decisions, 1941, 2d ed., Art. 2 § 5, citing in the annotation the opinion Pfeiffer v. Board of Education of the City of Detroit, 118 Mich. 560, 77 N.W. 250, 251-252 (1898) and its explanation of an 1885 provision of that state's constitution which was in turn based upon the Virginia Constitution of 1830.
2 Further, unlike the one at hand a monument on public property communicating religious speech must also be capable of being reasonably construed to communicate a seeu-lar or nonreligious meaning as determined by its language and the setting it is placed, Compare McCreary County v. American Civil Liberties Union of Ky., 545 U.S. 844, 125 S.Ct. 2722, 162 L.Ed.2d 729 (2005) (under contextual facts, Ten Commandments monument must be removed) with Van Orden v. Perry, 545 U.S. 677, 125 S.Ct. 2854, 162 L.Ed.2d 607 (2005) (under contextual facts, the Ten Commandments monument may stay). Cf. Meyer v. City of Oklahoma City, 1972 OK 45, 496 P.2d 789, 792 (no violation, considering the "silent" and "evanescent" (ephemeral, vanishing, transitory) nature of the fairgrounds cross).
¶ 3 Federal law is similar by allowing monuments with religious speech when the monument also portrays a secular meaning. The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit has recognized that "The Ten Commandments have a secular significance that government may acknowledge ... [and] we are unwilling to presume that the text of the Ten Commandments here could not be constitutionally integrated into a governmental display that highlights its secular significance." Green v. Haskell County Board of Commissioners, 568 F.3d 784, 798 (10th Cir.2009), cert. denied sub nom, Haskell County Bd. of Comm'rs v. Green, 559 U.S. 970, 130 S.Ct. 1687, 176 L.Ed.2d 180 (2010).
T4 We have no embracing historical and secular context here. © This isolated monument stating religious principles with religious symbols, without any other statements of secular historical relevance, and no proximate presentation with a common secular theme, compels my conclusion that it violates the Oklahoma Constitution, Article 2 § 5.
[ 5 I concur in the demal of the petition for rehearing.