Ohio Judge Has No Right to Push Religion in Courtroom, Says Americans United

An Ohio judge should remove a poster displaying the Ten Commandments
from his courtroom, Americans United for Separation of Church and State
has told a federal appeals court.

Americans United has filed a friend-of-the-court brief
arguing that Richland County Common Pleas Judge James DeWeese's poster
is an unconstitutional governmental endorsement of religion. A lower
court has already held that this display shows "a preference for
Judeo-Christian faiths" and does not belong in a courtroom.

The poster, designed by DeWeese, features the Commandments alongside
"humanist precepts." Below the text is a statement that says DeWeese
believes in moral absolutes such as the Commandments rather than the
moral relativism of the Humanist Manifesto.

Although the poster references DeWeese's acknowledgment of "the
importance of Almighty God's fixed moral standards," he claims that his
display is not religious but merely an illustration of legal or
philosophical "theory."

"Who is Judge DeWeese kidding?" asked the Rev. Barry W. Lynn,
Americans United executive director. "It's obvious that he is using his
courtroom to advance his personal religious viewpoint. That's wrong,
and the appeals court should say so."

Lynn noted that the judge has been on something of a crusade against
church-state separation. Before erecting this particular poster,
DeWeese had already been ordered by another court to remove a Decalogue
display from his courtroom.

Americans United, joined by The Interfaith Alliance, the
Anti-Defamation League, the Hindu American Foundation and the Union for
Reform Judaism, filed the brief in the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals.

The case against the judge's religious display was brought by the
American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio on behalf of its member, Bernard
Davis. Judge DeWeese is being represented by TV preacher Pat
Robertson's American Center for Law and Justice.

The AU brief asserts that DeWeese's "attempt to characterize his
religious display as legal or philosophical 'theory' is one in a long
line of efforts to dress religious doctrine in secular clothing."

AU reminds the court that this argument has failed in a similar case
before the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In 2003, the court
demanded that Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore remove a
Ten Commandments monument outside the Alabama State Judicial Building.
Moore, who refused to take down the 2.5-ton monument, was soon removed
from the state supreme court.

The brief in ACLU of Ohio v. DeWeese, was drafted by AU
Legal Director Ayesha N. Khan and AU Madison Fellow Taryn Wilgus Null
with assistance from AU Senior Litigation Counsel Alex J. Luchenitser.