WTOL.com, Toledo's News Leader, News 11 | Judge Appeals Display of Ten Commandments
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CINCINNATI (AP) -- A Mansfield judge should be able to display the Ten Commandments in his courtroom because they have a secular significance as the foundation for some modern laws, his attorney told a federal appeals court Friday.
Lawyer Frank Manion said a lower court erred last year when it ordered Richland County Common Pleas Judge James DeWeese to remove a framed poster of the commandments. Manion argued the Ten Commandments do not have a strictly religious significance.
Raymond Vasvari, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, argued the Ten Commandments are a religious document and displaying them in a courtroom implies government endorsement of religion.
U.S. District Judge Kathleen O'Malley ruled in June 2002 that posting the commandments was unconstitutional ``because the debate he (DeWeese) seeks to foster is inherently religious in character.''
The three-judge panel of the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did not say when it will rule.
Posted 3:30pm, Friday, October 31, 2003
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