Myth #10: The Eagles’s Tombstones are Nonsectarian

[Chapter 9, post #12]

“The Eagles’ consultation with a committee composed of members of several faiths in order to find a nonsectarian text underscores the group’s ethics-based motives.”[1]

Justice Stephen Breyer

The question raised by Myth #10 is whether the Eagles-donated Ten Commandments monument on the Texas State Capitol grounds is “sectarian.”  A sectarian Ten Commandments monument would be one whose text of the Ten Commandments is: “narrowly confined or devoted to a particular sect.”[2]  This issue most frequently arises before the courts in legislative prayer cases – that is, challenges to the practice of opening legislatures and local boards with a prayer to solemnize the meeting.[3]

Justice Breyer took a bite of the Eagles’ poisonous apple and provided the pivotal fifth vote in Van Orden v. Perry. One of Justice Breyer’s rationales for finding no Establishment Clause violation was that a committee of clergy had developed nonsectarian version of the Ten Commandments.  Some justices are of the view that under our Constitution government is permitted to advance religion as long as no single religion is preferred.[4]  I suppose that Justice Breyer was counting Judaism, Christianity and Islam as diverse religions eventho they are derivative of the religion of Abraham.

I discussed the “committee” more fully in the chapter Ruegemer Soars On Eagles Wings.  The essence is this – Judge E.J. Ruegemer established a local[5] committee of Jewish, Catholic and Protestant clergy to draft a nondenominational version of the Ten Commandments.  He believed that such universality would give him cover for the conspiracy he was about to undertake – collusion with state and local governments to violate the civil liberties of Americans – getting permission from governmental entities to erect tombstones to Jesus Christ on public property and proselytize “God’s law.”

It is not surprising that the version of the Ten Commandments that Ruegemer’s committee came up with most closely resembles the Catholic version in that the numbering of the first three commandments being man’s obligations to God[6] and the “covet” commandments are split in two as the ninth and tenth commandments.  Judge Ruegemer was a devout Catholic.

To many, it does not matter which version of the Ten Commandments is in the public square – as long as “God’s law” law is there for everyone to see.[7]  

To others, the version matters.  Often, parents do not want their children being indoctrinated in a religion different from their own – even a different Christian denomination.  This may seem exaggerated to some.  It is not.  In May and July of 1844, for example, Philadelphia experienced the Bible Riots following nativist groups spreading a rumor that Catholics were trying to remove the Bible from public schools. Numerous deaths and injuries resulted, as well as, the burning of several Catholic churches.[8]  Again, the version matters a lot to some people.

And to others, the Eagles-donated Ten Commandments monuments placed on courthouse lawns, public parks and public schools represent a violation of the principle of separation of church and state embodied in the First Amendment and should be removed.[9]

Justice Breyer suggests that the Texas monument is nonsectarian.  Clearly, Justice Breyer either ignored reality or didn’t do his homework in this case.  Hardly could the Ruegemer committee take multiple versions of the Ten Commandments, mix them all together and produce a universal version.  Instead, what the committee produced was an “Eagles version” of the Ten Commandments.[10]  It turned out not to be so universal after all, inasmuch as, over the two decades of the program, the aeries erected multiple versions of the Ten Commandments on courthouse lawns, public parks and school yards.[11]

To summarize the salient facts:

1.      In 1940, the Supreme Court held that the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment applies to the states.[12]  Then, seven years later, the Court held that the Establishment Clause applied to the states. [13]

2.      Aware of this, Judge Ruegemer was concerned that selecting either the Jewish, Catholic or Protestant version of the Ten Commandments would be construed as “sectarian” and violate the Establishment Clause.  He needed a scheme to circumvent the First Amendment that had recently been made applicable to the states, including his state of Minnesota. 

3.      Judge Ruegemer established a St. Cloud, Minnesota committee of Catholic, Protestant and Jewish clergy to develop a universal version of the Ten Commandments for the Eagles Ten Commandments program.  There were no persons on the committee from non-Jewish minority faiths or persons without religious belief. 

4.      Judge Ruegemer was a devout Catholic.

5.      There are three major versions of the Ten Commandments, differing in both numbering and wording.[14]

6.      The Jewish, Christian and Protestant faiths number the Ten Commandments differently.  For example, the version adopted by the Ruegemer Committee[15] follows most closely the Catholic numbering system wherein (a) the religious commandments comprise the first three commandments, (b) the secular commandment “Honor thy father and thy mother” is the fourth commandment and (c) the two “covet” commandments are separated as commandments nine and ten.[16]

 

7.      Early Eagles-donated Ten Commandment monuments did not include “Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven images,” thus making those monuments more closely identifiable with the Catholic version.[17]

8.      Some early Eagles-donated monuments reflect the Catholic numbering.[18]

 

9.      The numbering and lack of the “graven images commandment on early Eagles-donated Ten Commandments monuments raised serious concerns about their sectarian nature.  Subsequently monuments generally dropped the numbering and included the “graven images” commandment in order to be more Protestant friendly, including the 1961 Ten Commandments monument located on the Texas State Capitol grounds.[19]  

10.  As mentioned previously, the wording of the Ten Commandments varies among religions.  For example, in the Jewish version of the sixth commandment God commands: “You shall not murder”; whereas, the King James version, God commands: “Thou shalt not kill.”  Many people gloss over this distinction as being trivial.  However, it is important to some people as an identifier of which version of the Ten Commandments is being displayed.  All of the Eagles-donated Ten Commandments monuments that I am aware of use “kill,” suggesting a Catholic-Protestant preference.

Justice Stevens summed it up this way: “Moreover, despite the Eagles’ best efforts to choose a benign nondenominational text, the Ten Commandments display projects not just a religious, but an inherently sectarian, message.”[20]

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[1]  Van Orden v. Perry, 545 U.S. 677, 701 (2005) (Breyer, concurring in the judgment).

[2]  Dictionary.com, adjective, definition 2.  Available at http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sectarian.

[3]  The Supreme Court held in Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783 (1983), held that government funding for chaplains was constitutional because of the “unique history” of the United States.  [Note: the Court had previously held in Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203 (1963) that school-sponsored Bible reading in public schools to be unconstitutional.]

[4]  The “nonsectarian” rationale flies in the face of McCreary County v. ACLU of Ky., 545 U.S. 844, 860 (2005), decided the same day as Van Orden, which held that “First Amendment mandates governmental neutrality between religion and religion, and between religion and nonreligion.”

[5]  St. Cloud, Minnesota.

[6]   The second commandment in the Protestant version is: “Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven images” – is not part of the Catholic version.  As a concession to Protestants, the committee appended it to the first commandment.  The Protestant version, the “covet” commandment s are combined.  It should also be noted that the Hebrew version uses the word “murder” instead of “kill.” 

[7]  As an Atheist, the Biblical story of God giving Moses tablets of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai is a myth and, therefore, the various versions are of no significance to me.  The critical point is that government is prohibited by the First and Fourteenth Amendments from displaying the Ten Commandments in the public square.

[8]  See Philadelphia Nativist Riots at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_Nativist_Riots.  “During the 1840s, students in Philadelphia schools began the day with reading the Protestant version of the Bible.  On November 10, 1842, Philadelphia's Roman Catholic Bishop, Francis Kenrick, wrote a letter to the Board of Controllers of public schools, asking that Catholic children be allowed to read the Douai version of the Bible, used by Roman Catholics. He also asked that they be excused from other religious teaching while at school.  As a result, the Board of Controllers ordered that no child should be forced to participate in religious activities and stated that children were allowed whichever version of the Bible their parents wished.”  “After the riots, Bishop Kenrick ended his efforts to influence the public education system and began encouraging the creation of Catholic schools, with 17 being founded by 1860.”

[9]  To Separatists, the Eagles-donated Ten Commandments monuments are inherently religious and, therefore, their presence on public lands violates both the Supreme Court’s Lemon and neutrality tests.

[10]  I assume that the 1951 Brown and Bigelow 20x26 inch design incorporated the committee’s version of the Ten Commandments.  In that year, the Minnesota state aerie distributed “more than 7,000 smaller replicas of the framed Ten Commandments.”  Hoffman, The Real History of the Ten Commandments Project.  Hoffman calls the Eagles version “a universally acceptable translation of the Ten Commandments.”

[11]  Eagles historian and member Sue A Hoffman that “some criticism surfaced because of the different versions of the Ten Commandments and their numbering.  Changes were made after the first series of distributions regarding the numbering and wording of the Ten Commandments based on the Interdenominational Public School Format of 1958.  Some aeries still chose to keep the numbering system even after the change was offered.”  The Real History of the Ten Commandments Project, of the Fraternal Order of Eagles (2005), available at http://www.religioustolerance.org/hoffman01.htm. 

[12]  Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296 (1940).

[13]  Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947).

[14]  Jewish, Catholic and Protestant.  Altho Islam is an Abrahamic religion, there is no formal Islamic version of the Ten Commandments.

[15]  This conclusion assumes that the text adopted by the committee is reflected in the design by the artists of Brown and Bigelow who prepared the original decorative 20x26 inch version of the Ten Commandments.  See Sue A. Hoffman, The Real History of the Ten Commandments Project of the Fraternal Order of Eagles (2005) available at http://www.religioustolerance.org/hoffman01.htm.  [Note: Ms. Hoffman is a member of the F.O.E. She has identified over 150 Eagles-donated monuments in 34 states while researching for a book on the Eagles Ten Commandments Program.]

[16]  See photograph of an early 1950s Eagles Ten Commandments poster at http://wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws.com/blogs/poptheology/files/2012/10/10-C-Front.jpg.  Also note the two tablets at the top with Roman numerals I-III on the left tablet and IV-X on the right tablet are consistent with the Catholic faith.  This confirms the Catholic preference and sectarian nature of the Eagles Ten Commandments program.  In the Jewish and Protestant faiths, the first four commandments are religious and the last six are secular.

[17]  For example, the Denver, Colorado (1955), Helena, Montana (1956), Boone County, Indiana (1957) and Connellsville, Pennsylvania (1957) do not include the “graven images” commandment.

[18]  For example, Denver, Colorado (1955), Helena, Montana (1956), International Peace Garden (1956) (on the boarder of North Dakota and Canada), Boone County, Indiana (1957), Connellsville, Pennsylvania (1957) (image available at http://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/heraldstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/2/33/233b509d-253a-5812-9fe3-661bf02923b8/514ce5cf0c3af.image.jpg., Gastonia, North Carolina (1957) and Xenia (Greene County), Ohio (1957) (image available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/rubenrodz/1488741490/sizes/o/).

[19]  A photograph of the Eagles-donated Austin, Texas Ten Commandments monument is available at:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ten_Commandments_Monument.jpg.

[20]  Van Orden (Stevens, J., dissenting), at 717.

Myth #6: The Lemon Test Is Not “Useful”

[Chapter 9, post #8]

“Whatever may be the fate of the Lemon test in the larger scheme of Establishment Clause jurisprudence, we think it not useful in dealing with the sort of passive monument that Texas has erected on its Capitol grounds.” (Emphasis added.)[1]

Chief Justice Rehnquist

Everyone knows that lemons are very bitter.  Thus, it is no surprise that when a Lemon test analysis didn’t support Chief Justice Rehnquist’s view in Van Orden v. Perry, he simply declared that it wasn’t “useful.”

In Lemon v. Kurtzman,[2] the Supreme Court set forth a three-prong test to analyze governmental acts under the Establishment Clause.  If a governmental act failed any one of the prongs, the Court would find the act unconstitutional under the Establishment Clause.  To pass constitutional muster under the Lemon test, a governmental act must:

1.      Have a secular purpose.

2.      Not have the primary effect of either advancing or inhibiting religion.

3.      Not result in an “excessive government entanglement” with religion.

 

I'll run through a Lemon test analysis Van Orden v. Perry just for fun:

First, the Texas legislature’s stated secular purpose for erecting the Ten Commandments monument was commend and congratulate the Fraternal Order of Eagles “for its efforts in combating juvenile delinquency throughout our nation.”[3]  Obstensibly, this is a secular purpose.  However, “[w]hile the Court is normally deferential to a State’s articulation of a secular purpose, it is required that the statement of such purpose be sincere and not a sham.”[4]  Let’s take a closer look.

 The truth is that the stated legislative purpose in Van Orden was a sham intended to circumvent the Establishment Clause.  The idea of putting the Ten Commandments monument came not from the Texas legislature or the governor’s office, but was of a nation campaign by the Eagles to saturate the United States with the “laws of God.”  

While Texas’s purpose is obvious to me, for those who may have some doubt let’s take a step back in time to the 1940s and the Fable of Judge E.J. Reugemer and the Wayward Juvenile.  As the story goes, in 1956 Judge Reugemer – a devout Catholic and chairman of the Fraternal Order of Eagles Youth Guidance Commission – gave the youth the choice of sentences of either reform school or learn the Ten Commandments.  Judge Ruegemer went on to establish the Eagles Ten Commandments programs – the distribution of tens of thousands paper copies of Ten Commandments and, starting in 1955, donating more than 150 granite monuments engraved with the full text of the Ten Commandments to cities and states, including Austin, Texas.[5]

The Court in Stone v. Graham said: “The pre-eminent purpose for posting the Ten Commandments on schoolroom walls is plainly religious in nature. The Ten Commandments are undeniably a sacred text in the Jewish and Christian faiths, and no legislative recitation of a supposed secular purpose can blind us to that fact.”[6] The purpose of the Texas legislature for displaying the Eagles-donated Ten Commandments monument, like the purpose of the Kentucky legislature for mandating the display of the Ten Commandments on walls of public schools in Stone, was “to display the full text of one version of the Ten Commandments.”[7]

Second, the prominent display of the six-foot tall Ten Commandments monument between the Capitol and the state Supreme Court clearly has the effect of advancing Christianity to the detriment of other religions[8] and nonbelief – thereby violating the second prong of the Lemon test.

And third, in my opinion, the Texas legislature’s continuing to permit the monument to be displayed on its capitol grounds violates the “excessive government entanglement” prong of Lemon.  However, the courts generally limit this prong to situations involving a state’s entanglement with a religious institution.[9]  Consequently, for the sake of argument, I’ll give this prong a pass.

Thus, what Chief Justice Rehnquist’s plurality opinion in Van Orden informs us of is that justices, when they don’t like a rule established in a previous Supreme Court case,[10] either they ignore the rule (such as by saying it doesn’t apply in their case) or concoct a phony secular purpose (AND deny that the offending act has a religious purpose or primary affect of advancing religion).  Chief Justice Rehnquist has done both.

Interestingly, the dissenters also ignored analyzing Van Orden under the Lemon test.  That failure is not as devious as it may sound because they analyzed Van Orden under the “neutrality” principle: "First Amendment mandates governmental neutrality between religion and religion, and between religion and nonreligion.”[11]  While not identical, the Lemon and neutrality tests generally produce the same or similar result.  I would further note that the neutrality test avoids the manipulation of the “reasonable observer” that Lemon has been criticized for.

Accordingly, this author holds that Chief Justice Rehnquist’s claim that the Lemon test isn’t useful is a myth – for the Chief Justice eschewed the test because it would have produced a result that he disagreed with.

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[1]  Van Orden v. Perry, 545 U.S. 677, 686 (2005).

[2]  Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602, 612-613 (1971). 
[3]  The District Court quoting from a resolution “adopted by the Texas Senate on February 14, 1961, by the Texas House on February 22, 1961 and signed by the governor on March 10, 1961.”  Van Orden v. Perry, 2002 WL 32737462, *4 (2002).

[4]  Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578, 586-587 (1987); Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38, 64 (1985) (Powell, J., concurring); id., at 75, (O'Connor, J., concurring in judgment); Stone v. Graham, 449 U.S.39, 41 (1980); Abington School Dist. v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 223-224 (1963).  See also McCreary County, Ky. v. ACLU of Ky., 545 U.S. 844, 864 (2005) (Lemon requires the secular purpose “to be genuine, not a sham, and not merely secondary to a religious objective”).

[5]  Other Eagles-donated Ten Commandments monuments on public property in Texas are located in Corpus Christi (1960), Dallas and Galveston (1957).

[6]  Stone v. Graham, 449 U.S. 39, 41 (1980).

[7]  Van Orden , at  707 (Stevens, J., dissenting). 

[8]  The Eagles-donated monument is sectarian.  This point will be discussed more fully in Myth #10: The Eagles’ Tombstones are Nonsectarian.

[9]  See, for example, Conor Reilly, Preliminary Injunction, Excessive Entanglement, and Prior Restraints: Should Courts Treat Potential Pretrial Religious Infringement the Same as Potential Pretrial Speech Infringement?, Akron J. of Const. Law and Policy, 2012, 3:1, at 4-7. Available at http://www.akronconlawjournal.com/articles/1-Reilly_Macro.pdf.

[10]  The conservatives on the Supreme Court have wanted to overturn Lemon but thus far do not have the votes to do so.

[11]  McCreary County v. ACLU, 545 U.S. 844, 860 (2005).  Note: the four dissenters in Van Orden – Justices Stevens, O’Connor, Ginsburg and Souter – were in the majority in McCreary.

The Supreme Court Blesses the Texas Ten Commandments Tombstone

[Chapter 9, post #2]

Part II: Mythical and Deceptive Arguments of the Van Orden Majority[1]

“Presented to Moses on Mount Sinai by the hand of God on two stone tablets, the Ten Commanmdnts stand today after more than 3500 years as God’s law to the human race.  The first three are our obligation to God—the last seven our obligation to our fellow men.  They are a pattern for our human relations.  All the laws of the Country dealing with human relations are based upon the Ten Commandments.”[2]

Youth Guidance Commission

Fraternal Order of Eagles

E.J. Reugemer

Chairman, Judge District Court

St. Cloud, Minnesota

“The Texas Ten Commandments monument profoundly expresses a religious message: “there is a God, and that God has commanded rules for behavior.”

Erin Chimerinsky [3]

This post introduces the Supreme Court's decision in Van Orden v. Perry and sets the stage for discussion  of Myth #1: The Display of the Ten Commandments on Public Property in Washington, D.C. is Common.

In the only Ten Commandments case to be decided by the Supreme Court prior to Van Orden, the Court in 1980 held that a Kentucky statute requiring the posting of a copy of the Ten Commandments on the wall of each public classroom in the state was unconstitutional as a violation of the Establishment Clause.[4]  This decision did not expressly confine its holding to a public elementary or secondary schools, thus leaving the door open for further litigation with respect to public parks, state capitol grounds and courthouses – and along came the consolidated cases of Van Orden v. Perry (large granite monument on state capitol grounds) and McCreary County, Ky. v. ACLU of Ky. (copy of the Ten Commandments hung on a courthouse wall) in 2005.

On Black Monday,[5] the Supreme Court of the United States, in Van Orden, handed down one of its worst reasoned decisions of all time. That is the day the Court gave excuse after excuse why it permitted one of the pre-eminent symbols of the Christian faith to remain on the Texas capitol grounds notwithstanding the First Amendment prohibition against governmental acts “respecting an establishment of religion.”[6]  Van Orden v. Perry did for non-Christians what Plessy v. Ferguson[7] did for blacks in America – reaffirming their second class citizenship.

Van Orden[8] produced seven opinions:

·         Chief Justice Rehnquist announced the judgment of the Court and wrote an opinion in which Justices Scalia, Kennedy and Thomas joined.

·         Justice Scalia wrote a concurring opinion.

·         Justice Thomas wrote a concurring opinion.

·         Justice Breyer wrote an opinion concurring in the judgment.

·         Justice Stevens wrote a dissenting opinion in which Justice Ginsburg joined.

·         Justice O’Connor wrote a dissenting opinion.

·         Justice Souter wrote a dissenting opinion in which Justices Stevens and Ginsburg joined.

Chief Justice Rehnquist’s plurality opinion and the concurring opinions of Justices Scalia, Thomas and Breyer read like Christian Apologetics – argument in support of Christianity (and, here, the display of its iconography on public property).  Perhaps to persons unfamiliar with the facts of the case and Establishment Clause jurisprudence, their arguments may appear logical and persuasive.  However, as one who has extensively studied Judge E.J. Ruegemer, the Fraternal Order of Eagles Ten Commandments program and the many cases involving Ten Commandments monument cases, the arguments of the Van Orden majority are disturbingly trumped up – with sole purpose of justifying the unconstitutional act of displaying the full text of a Christian version of the Ten Commandments on government property – in short, government endorsement of Christianity.

Over the next several weeks, Secular Law will review a dozen deceptive, if not purely erroneous and mythical, arguments made by the Van Orden majority.  At the conclusion of this series, I believe that ample evidence will have been presented that a reasonable, objective person would conclude that:

1.      The Van Orden decision was clearly wrongly decided,

2.      The U.S. Supreme Court should sua sponte overturn its 2005 decision and

3.      Remand the case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which in turn would direct the District Court to issue an injunction ordering the removal of the Eagles-donated Ten Commandments tombstone from the Texas state capitol grounds.

To set the stage for Myth #1: The Display of the Ten Commandments on Public Property in Washington, D.C. is Common, it is important to recall four facts about the Eagles-donate Ten Commandment monument in Austin, Texas.  (See also Chapter 6 – Eagles Monuments are Jesus Tombstones.) 

• First, the Fraternal Order of Eagles had a religious purpose for donating the monuments to cities and states.[9]
• Second, the large granite monuments are permanent displays. 
• Third, permanent monuments on public property are “government speech.”[10]
• And fourth, the Texas monument displays the full English text of a Christian version of the Ten Commandments.

— ♦ — 

To start:

Everything is bigger in Texas!

The six-feet tall, Eagles-donated Ten Commandments Monument on the grounds of the Texas State Capitol (behind the capitol building). Austin, Texas. Photograph by J. Williams. (Aug. 26, 2002) Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ten_Commandments_Monument.jpg

This is what JUMPS out at passersby: the Ten Commandments I AM the Lord thy God. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.   Though shalt not make to thyself any graven    Images. Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord    thy God in vain. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Honor thy father and thy mother that the    days may be long upon the land which the    Lord thy God giveth thee. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness against    thy neighbor. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor    his manservant, nor his maid servant, nor his     cattle nor anything that is thy neighbors.

 The take-a-way from the above photograph is that those who walk by the Texas's Eagles-donated tombstone to Jesus Christ, including Thomas Van Orden in the early 2000s, see one of the pre-eminent symbols of Christianity with the full text of an English version of the Ten Commandments.

In contrast, no one who observes the 11 depictions of the Ten Commandments (presented in future posts) listed by Chief Justice Rehnquist in his plurality opinion in Van Orden will see a partial or full English text of any version of the Ten Commandments.  Instead, they will see:

    3 – Blank tablets

    3 – Tablets with Roman numerals *

    2 – Ten Commandments not depicted

    1 – Tablets with Hebrew text commanding murder, adultery, theft

    1 – Tablets with a Hebrew version of the Ten Commandments

    1 – To be determined (photo of gates of the courtroom, Supreme Court requested)

* There is an ongoing debate whether the Roman numerals I-X (1-10) represent the Ten Commandments, the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments to the Constitution) or “law” generally.  The issue need not be discussed here as the critical point is that Roman numerals I-X are not remotely equivalent to the full English text of the Ten Commandments.  Needless to say, a blank tablet leaves the tablet’s meaning to one’s imagination. 

Next post: Myth #1: The Display of the Ten Commandments on Public Property in Washington, D.C. is Common.

 __________

Footnotes:

1. This is a continuation of my Sept. 20 post and part of Chapter 9 of my forthcoming book: Supreme Scandal: The Supreme Court Blesses the Ten Commandments.  
2. The first paragraph on the back of a 1950s Fraternal Order of Eagles Ten Commandments poster.  Judge E.J. Reugemer was the driving force behind the Eagles Ten Commandments Program while he was chairman of the organization’s Youth Guidance Commission. 
3. Why Justice Breyer Was Wrong in Van Orden v. Perry, 14 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. I (2005), http://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmborj/vol14/iss1/2 , at 15.  Mr. Chimerinsky argued on behalf of Thomas Van Orden before the Supreme Court.
4. Stone v. Graham, 449 U.S. 39 (1980).
5. June 27, 2005 – the day the Supreme Court hand down its decision in Van Orden v. Perry, 545 U.S. 677 (2005).  In the other case, McCreary County, Ky. v. ACLU of Ky., 545 U.S. 844 (2005), Justice Breyer switched sides – resulting in McCreary County being correctly decided (in the view of this author) under Establishment Clause jurisprudence.
6. Establishment Clause of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” Const., amend. 1.
7. Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896) – upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation even in public accommodations under the doctrine of “separate but equal.  See Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plessy_v._Ferguson for a summary of the case involving racial segregation in railroads.
8. A transcript of oral arguments in Van Orden v. Perry is available here and the slip opinions are available here.
9. The Fraternal Order of Eagles purpose for erecting over 150 granite Ten Commandment monuments on public property, as well as its distribution of thousands of paper copies of the Ten Commandments and 250,000 copies of On Eagles Wings ( a 96-page comic book distributed to boy scouts), was to spread what the organization believed to be God’s laws of human behavior.
10. Pleasant Grove City v. Summum, 555 U.S. 460 (2009) – the court held that “the City’s decision to accept certain privately donated monuments while rejecting respondent’s is best viewed as a form of government speech.”  Justice Alito’s majority opinion, slip opinion at 18.  Slip Opinion available at http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/07-665.