Replies

Barron v. Baltimore.
Chief Justice Marshall: "it is a part of the history of the day, that the great revolution which established the Constitution of the United States was not effected without immense opposition. Serious fears were extensively entertained that those powers which the patriot statesmen who then watched over the interests of our country deemed essential to union, and to the attainment of those invaluable objects for which union was sought, might be exercised in a manner dangerous to liberty. In almost every convention by which the Constitution was adopted, amendments to guard against the abuse of power were recommended. These amendments demanded security against the apprehended encroachments of the General Government -- not against those of the local governments. In compliance with a sentiment thus generally expressed, to quiet fears thus extensively entertained, amendments were proposed by the required majority in Congress and adopted by the States.
These amendments contain no expression indicating an intention to apply them to the State governments. This court cannot so apply them. "

John Marshall was not one to shirk from claiming any power for the federal courts.
But he was also an honest man.

(Of course, he didn't have the benefit of today's NEA education!)

Rehnquist's scholarly dissent in Everson HERE is neccessary reading to understand the establishment clause: "...Madison then spoke, and said that "he apprehended the meaning of the words to be, that Congress should not establish a religion, and enforce the legal observation of it by law, nor compel men to worship God in any manner contrary to their conscience." Id., at 730. He said that some of the state conventions had thought that Congress might rely on the Necessary and Proper Clause to infringe the rights of conscience or to establish a national religion, and " to prevent these effects he presumed the amendment was intended, and he thought it as well expressed as the nature of the language would admit." Ibid. "
The patently false rationale of the Everson case has been largely abandoned by the court.

But Judge Crain has followed the precedents which remain- as a conservative judge properly should.

You started out on the right foot using the Fourteenth Amendment.
At some point States can violate the Fourteenth by supporting a religion. I don't see how this does, but a case can be argued based on the Fourteenth.

"The breadth of the Chief Justice’s position is illustrated by his counsel’s CONCESSION at oral argument that if we adopted his position, the Chief Justice would be free to adorn the walls of the Alabama Supreme Court’s courtroom with sectarian religious murals and have decidedly religious quotations painted above the bench. Every government building could be topped with a cross, or a menorah,or a statue of Buddha, depending upon the views of the officials with authority over the premises. A crèche could occupy the place of honor in the lobby or rotunda of every municipal, county, state, and federal building. Proselytizing religious messages could be played over the public address system in every government building at the whim of the official in charge of the premises.However appealing those prospects may be to some, the position Chief Justice Moore takes is foreclosed by Supreme Court precedent."

From Glassroth v. Moore:

Based on the evidence presented during a week-long trial and for the reasons that follow, this court holds that the evidence is overwhelming and the law is clear that the Chief Justice violated the Establishment Clause. But, in announcing this holding today, the court believes it is important to clarify at the outset that the court does not hold that it is improper in all instances to display the Ten Commandments in government buildings; nor does the court hold that the Ten Commandments are not important, if not one of the most important, sources of American law. Rather the court's limited holding, as will be explained below in more detail, is that the Chief Justice's actions and intentions in this case crossed the Establishment Clause line between the permissible and the impermissible.

Some reason and Constitutional wisdom from Judge Roy Moore - his religion is the only religion:

"By leaving religion [seemingly] undefined, the [Supreme] Court has opened the door to the erroneous assumption that, under the Establishment Clause, religion could include Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and whatever might occupy in man's life a place parallel to that filled by God ... In such a case, God and religion are no longer distinguished in meaning, permitting the First Amendment to be used to exclude the very object it was meant to protect, namely the sovereignty of God over civil government."

Barron v. Baltimore is no longer relevant. In fact, as clearly stated by the primary author of the amendment's 1st section, the 14th Amendment was intended to make the first eight amendment's applicable to states.

Mr. Speaker, that the scope and meaning of the limitations imposed by the first section, fourteenth amendment of the Constitution may be more fully understood, permit me to say that the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, as contradistinguished from citizens of a State, are chiefly defined in the first eight amendments to the Constitution of the United States. Those eight amendments are as follows: [Mr. Bingham recites the first eight amendments.]
These eight articles I have shown never were limitations upon the power of the States, until made so by the fourteenth amendment. The words of that amendment, 'no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States,' are an express prohibition upon every State of the Union, which may be enforced under existing laws of Congress, and such other laws for their better enforcement as Congress may make. . . .
Is it not clear that other and different privileges and immunities than those to which a citizen of a State was entitled are secured by the provisions of the fourteenth article, that no State shall abridge the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, which are defined in the eight articles of amendment, and which were not limitations on the power of the States before the fourteenth amendment made them limitations?
Cong.Globe, App. 1st Sess., 42d Cong., pp. 84