Liberty Counsel
NEWS RELEASE

Contact: PUBLIC RELATIONS DEPARTMENT - 800-671-1776

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: September 19, 2007

Ashland, KY - Yesterday, Federal District Court Judge Karl Forrester of the Eastern District of Kentucky ruled that a display of the Ten Commandments, together with other historical documents in the Rowan County Fiscal Courtroom, is constitutional. Liberty Counsel represents Rowan County, Kentucky, in a lawsuit that was filed in 2001 by the ACLU of Kentucky, claiming that the display violated the Establishment Clause of the Constitution.

The display that Judge Forrester upheld is a "Foundations of American Law and Government" display including the Ten Commandments, the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence, the Magna Charta, the Star-Spangled Banner, the National Motto, the Preamble to the Kentucky Constitution, the Bill of Rights to the United States Constitution, and a picture of Lady Justice.

Public displays of the Ten Commandments have enjoyed unprecedented favor in both the courts and the legislatures since Mathew Staver argued the McCreary County, Kentucky, case at the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005. McCreary County involved the exact display that was upheld by Judge Forrester yesterday. The McCreary County case is back at the district court for another ruling but is likely to return to the Supreme Court, where a majority is expected to uphold the display. These displays are spreading throughout the Nation. In 2006 the Georgia legislature passed a law allowing a similar display in government buildings.

In 2005, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals also upheld the same Ten Commandments display in Mercer County, Kentucky, which Liberty Counsel defended. The Sixth Circuit governs KY, OH, TN and MI. Liberty Counsel defended a similar display in Elkhart County, Indiana v. Books, that was upheld by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in 2005, which governs IL, WI and IN.

The ACLU did not ask the Supreme Court to review these cases. The obvious reason is that the ACLU no longer has a solid majority in its favor on the High Court, since Justice O'Connor retired, and is unlikely to win any Ten Commandments case that goes to the Court. Liberty Counsel is also defending a Ten Commandments monument in Dixie County, Florida, against an ACLU lawsuit.

Mathew Staver, Founder of Liberty Counsel and Dean of Liberty University School of Law, commented: "The tide is turning against the ACLU's war on the Ten Commandments. Courts are returning to common sense recognition of the historical role of the Ten Commandments and its influence on American law. The ACLU has been on a search and destroy mission to remove every vestige of our religious history from public view. The ACLU's attempts to remove the Ten Commandments are nothing more than historical revisionism at its worst. The Ten Commandments played a major role in the development of American law."

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Read the court's opinion in this case