Posted on 12/10/2002 10:56:29 AM PST by Dallas
MONTGOMERY, Ala. --
Chief Justice Roy Moore filed notice Tuesday in federal court that he will appeal a judge's order that he remove a monument to the Ten Commandments from the rotunda of the Alabama Judicial Building.
"Federal district courts have no jurisdiction or authority to prohibit the acknowledgment of God that is specifically recognized in the Constitution of Alabama," Moore said in a statement announcing the appeal.
Moore's spokesman, Tom Parker, read the statement at a news conference Tuesday in front of the 5,300-pound granite monument.
"For a federal court to say we cannot acknowledge God contradicts our history and our law," Moore said in the statement. He did not attend the news conference.
U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson's order found the monument violates the Constitution's ban against government establishment of religion and gave Moore 30 days to remove it.
One of Moore's attorneys, Phillip Jauregui, said part of the chief justice's appeal would be based on the argument that Thompson did not have jurisdiction.
But an attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center, Richard Cohen, said plaintiffs would win again on appeal.
"I think what we heard today echoed of George Wallace," Cohen said. "He said the federal courts have no authority to order him to do anything Alabama law doesn't require him to do. Whatever views Moore has about this, federal law is supreme."
The notice of plans to appeal to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta was filed in federal district court in Montgomery.
Moore moved the monument into the rotunda in the middle of the night on July 31, 2001, with a film crew from Coral Ridge Ministries documenting the event. Moore, a conservative Christian, attracted national attention as a circuit judge in Gadsden when he refused to remove a wooden Ten Commandments display from a courtroom wall. During his campaign for chief justice, Moore was often referred to as "The Ten Commandments judge."
A lawsuit was filed in October 2001 by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of three Alabama lawyers who said the monument violated the constitution.
During a weeklong trial in October, Moore testified that he believes the Ten Commandments to be the foundation of American law. He said he installed the monument, which also includes quotations from historical figures, partly because of his concern that the country has suffered a moral decline over the past 40 or 50 years as a result of federal court rulings, including those against prayer in public schools.
It's well established that any seperation of church and state only applies at the federal level. States are supposed to be able to do whatever they want.
That got muddied a bit by the 14th Amendment.
"I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So help me,..uh Me?"
If the judge were to invoke the Ten Commandments as relevant common law in trying or sentencing someone, you would have a point, and the defendent would have sound reason to appeal the judge's decision, and the judge should face sanction. But it is not establishment of religion to have the Ten commandments in the lobby of a courtroom, nor to have a menorah at the local town hall, or other religious symbols in the Governor's mansion. The anti-religion types in this country have taken their crusade too far, to the point of irrelevance.
So states could mandate that all its residents have to be one religion, or that those of a certain religion would have more or less advantages, preferences, or restrictions? I don't think so.
That, indeed, is a provable FACT, over and over and over and over, year after year after year after year. As Bill O'Reilly pointed out, our country was just fine for the first 200 years. It's only been the last 50 that everyone's been "made aware" of how "screwed up American and the Founding Fathers" were to think they way the did the first 200 years of our history.
I'm glad the lawyers and ACLU's and others during our generation are so much more enlightened about the Founding Fathers' intent than were the Founding Fathers themselves. /sarcasm
I find that Judge Thompson's order violates the Constituition's ban against government prohibiting the free exercise of religion. So there. ;-)
That would be establishing a religion, which is not what I said.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.