Law Professor Jeff Cooper of Cooped Up makes an eloquent case for the righteousness of last week's federal court ruling in Glassroth v. Moore banning a monument to the Ten Commandments in an Alabama Courthouse. The decision was written by U.S. District Court Judge Myron H. Thompson and held that the Ten Commandments monument in the Alabama Judicial Building violates the establishment clause and must be removed.

Jeff distinguishes this case from the one earlier this year involving the Pledge of Allegiance. He argues that we cannot accept political expediency or backlash as a justification to abdicate from the clear meaning of such a central provision of the Bill of Rights:

"The monument in question is newly-installed, at the instigation and under the authority of the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. And Chief Justice Moore made it clear, in his public statements and in his trial testimony, that his purpose in placing the monument prominently in the courthouse rotunda was to acknowledge the sovereignty of God—the Judeo-Christian God—over the state. As such, Chief Justice Moore's actions represented a clear and powerful governmental endorsement of a particular family of religions. They amount to a frontal assault on the Supreme Court's establishment clause jurisprudence by the most prominent judicial officer in the state."

"There are growing forces seeking to advance a radically different vision of the First Amendment than the one that currently prevails in Supreme Court jurisprudence and to bar contrary voices from the courts. Chief Judge Moore's monument is an important part of this effort. Here we have a religious document, prominently placed in an important government building, for an express religious purpose. If the establishment clause is to retain meaning beyond barring government endorsement of one particular Christian denomination, this action cannot be allowed to pass unchallenged. "

For those who haven't looked at the First Amendment lately, since it has become a daily staple of the media, we thought we'd reprint it:

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances

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