Editor's note: The Associated Press reported that U.S. District Judge Tom Varlan on Dec. 3 issued a stay in the ACLU's case against Monroe County's Ten Commandments display. Varlan said the stay was issued because the U.S. Supreme Court is considering two similar lawsuits from Texas and Kentucky and a decision in those cases could affect the outcome of the Tennessee challenge.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Posting the Ten Commandments in courthouses will be revisited after the American Civil Liberties Union in Tennessee filed a federal lawsuit yesterday in Knoxville against Monroe County.
Hedy Weinberg, executive director of the ACLU in Tennessee, said the organization’s goal isn’t to file lawsuits but “to help people understand the importance of our constitutional guarantees.”
“The ACLU’s commitment to religious freedom is what motivates us to pursue these cases when asked by local residents,” she said. “In this case, we have a government promoting religious doctrine, and that clearly violates the establishment clause.”
County Mayor J. Allan Watson said he felt the East Tennessee county had a strong case. The Ten Commandments were posted in 2000 across from a courtroom in the lobby of the Monroe County Courthouse in Madisonville.
“We will defend the lawsuit. The county commission has voted unanimously to defend the right to keep displaying it,” he said.
In December, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, which hears cases from Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee, ruled in a Kentucky case that Ten Commandments postings with other historical documents in county administration buildings was unconstitutional.
In May 2002, federal Judge Allan Edgar ordered Hamilton County to take down its Ten Commandments displays at the courthouse and city courts building.
“The Hamilton County case is unambiguous,” Weinberg said. “We asked Monroe County politicians to comply with the Constitution. They choose not to, and we were left with no option.”
Watson, mayor since 1990, said other documents — like the Bill of Rights, the U.S. Constitution and portraits of George Washington and James Monroe — hang in the courthouse but are not attached to the Ten Commandments display.
The ACLU notified the county in November that it planned to challenge the display.
“At the time, I called a special session of our county commission,” Watson said. “We had close to 500 people come to that special meeting and talk for an hour and a half. In that hour and a half, two people spoke against it simply because of the rulings in the past and First Amendment rights.”
County attorney Sharon Lee and Pat Robertson’s American Center for Law and Justice will lead the county’s legal team, Watson said.
Monroe County has 40,000 residents and borders North Carolina about 40 miles south of Knoxville.