Court Agrees to Take Free Speech Case

AP via SFGate ^ | 3/31/8 | PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer

[SmithL]

The Supreme Court has agreed to consider a free speech case in which a church wants to place a religious monument in a park.

Officials in Pleasant Grove City, Utah, asked the court to step into the lawsuit brought by the religious group known as Summum, saying that if the group prevails, governments would be inundated with demands to display donated monuments.

The dispute stems from Pleasant Grove City's refusal to allow the display of a "Seven Aphorisms of Summum" monument in the same park that is the home for a Ten Commandments monument donated by the Fraternal Order of Eagles 47 years ago.

At issue is whether a donated monument displayed by a municipality remains the private speech of the original donor, or is government speech; and whether placing donated monuments in a government-owned park creates a public forum or whether the government retains authority to select which monuments to display.

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver ruled that monument remains the private speech of the donor and that the park is a public forum.

"Government bodies are now sitting targets for demands that they grant 'equal access' to whatever comparable monuments a given group wishes to have installed, be it Summum's Seven Aphorisms, an atheist group's Monument to Freethought or Rev. Fred Phelps's denunciations of homosexual persons," lawyers for Pleasant Grove City wrote in asking the Supreme Court to intervene.

[Always Right]

The seven great Summum Principles upon which the Summum Philosophy is based are as follows:

THE PRINCIPLE OF PSYCHOKINESIS

THE PRINCIPLE OF CORRESPONDENCE

THE PRINCIPLE OF VIBRATION

THE PRINCIPLE OF OPPOSITION

THE PRINCIPLE OF RHYTHM

THE PRINCIPLE OF CAUSE AND EFFECT

THE PRINCIPLE OF GENDER

[MarkT]

I am not sure why the city declined but the easiest excuse is that we do not want the financial responsibility of upkeep and the legal liability if someone got hurt playing on or near it. Next case.

[coffee260]

The article seemed unnecessarily vague. That to me means there’s something else to this story.