Academic

Thoughts on Pleasant City v. Summum

By Calvin Massey

The Supreme Court ruled, 9-0, that the Utah city of Pleasant Grove may refuse the request of the Summum sect, a latter day band of Gnostic Christians, to erect a monument in a city park displaying the Seven Aphorisms of the Summum.  Some time ago, the city had erected a number of monuments and artifacts in the park paying tribute to the city's pioneer history.  Among those monuments was one displaying the Ten Commandments.  By an 8-0 vote, the majority concluded that permanent monuments on city property are government speech, thus rendering the Summum's free speech claims (premised on the contention that the city had created a public forum) irrelevant.  But the effect of the decision is to increase the signficiance of the endorsement test for determining when governmental display of religious imagery or text violates the Establishment Clause.  That issue was not argued to the Court in the Summum case.  It may be before the Court next term in Salazar v. Buono, 08-472, a case presenting the question of whether a war memorial consisting of a Latin cross that was once on governmental property (but which is now on private property simply because the government swapped land to place the cross/memorial in private hands) is a forbidden endorsement of religion.  There is a significant threshold issue of standing in Salazar, however, so we may have to wait a while to see whether the endorsement test survives as a mode of analysis.  Here is a SCOTUS wiki summary of Salazar.

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on February 26, 2009 (boomark / email).