Loading ...Jesus painting unconstitutional, judge says
flockwoodBottom line: If you post a picture of Gandhi, Buddha and Jesus at the county courthouse, the courts will allow them. If it’s Jesus only, the portrait’s coming down.
La. courthouse’s lone Jesus painting deemed unconstitutional
By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN – 15 hours ago
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Displaying a portrait of Jesus in the foyer of a Louisiana courthouse is unconstitutional, a federal judge ruled this week, siding with civil libertarians who sued over the display.
But inserting Jesus within a group portrait of historic figures at the courthouse is permissible, the judge said.
In a ruling filed Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Ivan Lemelle awarded “nominal” damages plus attorneys’ fees and costs to the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana in its case against Slidell City Court, Judge James Lamz and St. Tammany Parish, which partially finances the court.
Lemelle said during a hearing last September that he would have ordered court officials to remove the Jesus icon if they hadn’t already expanded the display to include portraits of other historic “lawgivers,” including Moses, Charlemagne and Napoleon Bonaparte.
His ruling this week echoes those remarks and explains that the expanded display is constitutional because a reasonable observer wouldn’t see it as sending a religious message.
However, Lemelle concluded that the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights were violated by the original display, which depicted Jesus presenting the New Testament above the words, “To Know Peace, Obey These Laws.”
“Context” is the “crucial factor” in determining if a religious display is unconstitutional, Lemelle wrote.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a Ten Commandments display on the grounds of the Texas state capitol was constitutional, in part, because it was accompanied by other monuments and historical markers, Lemelle noted.
However, the Supreme Court ruled that a Ten Commandments display in Kentucky was unconstitutional because county officials there had “specifically expressed their intent to erect and maintain a religious display,” Lemelle wrote.
J. Michael Johnson, an attorney representing the defendants for the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian civil rights group, said he is disappointed by Lemelle’s ruling and may file an appeal.
“It’s unfortunate that the ACLU seems to be on a search-and-destroy mission for all things religious,” he said.
Marjorie Esman, the ACLU chapter’s executive director, said Lemelle’s decision appears to be consistent with the Supreme Court’s rulings in similar cases.
“We’ve always felt that this was a very clear-cut case,” she said. “There was no need to break new ground on this.”
The ACLU sued the lawsuit last year on behalf of an unidentified person who complained about the original display. Esman said the ACLU’s objections were satisfied by the expansion of the display.
Lemelle gave the plaintiffs 10 days to propose a “reasonable” award for attorney’s fees and costs. The ACLU has asked for only $1 in damages.
April 17th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
I keep telling you guys, it’s the plastic reindeer. You can display anything so long as you put it beside a literal or symbolic plastic reindeer to make the display secular. Here, the pictures of Gandhi and Buddha are the plastic reindeer. Charlemagne is even better, because no one knows who he was, which gives it that historic aura.
April 18th, 2008 at 12:53 am
Caleb, I thought of your plastic reindeer as soon as I read this piece. It’s a good summation of the legal test. I also like the French influence in this case, with Charlemagne and Napoleon Bonaparte as part of the display. It is Louisiana, after all. We have to modify the discussion of English common law on a previous post to “English common law for all states except Louisiana.”
Perhaps this seems like a radical idea, but why do courthouses need to display any pictures at all? They’re not art galleries. Their function is to handle litigation.
Once again the taxpayers get to pay for the games played by the ACLU and the Alliance Defense Fund.
April 18th, 2008 at 11:02 am
If the courthouses were to adopt Larry’s no pictures rule, it would certainly make the lawyers happy. Every time a judge retires, they commission a portrait of the judge (no matter how dumb he or she was in real life) and hang it in the courthouse. They pay for these portraits by dunning the practicing lawyers. I didn’t think I’d ever been a patron of the arts until I thought of all those judicial portraits that I helped pay for.
And if you limit it to portraits of real judges, you don’t have to put plastic reindeer or pictures of Charlemagne around them.