OKLAHOMA CITY — The ACLU of Oklahoma on Friday filed suit in Johnston County District Court seeking to have a recently installed Ten Commandments monument removed from public property.
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The ACLU launched the legal challenge that resulted in the Oct. 5 removal of a privately funded Ten Commandments monument at the state Capitol. The Johnston County monument went up on the courthouse lawn in Tishomingo the next day.
The Johnston County commissioners had approved its placement, said Roy Blevins, a county commissioner.
Its roughly $1,800 cost was paid with private money, said Ivan Richeson, a local pastor who helped raise the funds.
The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled June 30 that the Capitol monument was religious in nature and that its placement on state property violated the Oklahoma Constitution because it benefited a religion.
The new ACLU lawsuit, brought on behalf of six Johnston County residents, makes the same claims that led to the removal of the Capitol monument.
The Oklahoma Constitution says, “No public money or property shall ever be appropriated, applied, donated, or used, directly or indirectly, for the use, benefit, or support of any sect, church, denomination, or system of religion, or for the use, benefit, or support of any priest, preacher, minister, or other religious teacher or dignitary, or sectarian institution as such.”
According to the lawsuit, the monument supports and endorses the faiths and creeds of some religions while excluding others.
The suit asks that the court “declare the placement of the Ten Commandments monument to be a violation of the Oklahoma Constitution, and as such, an illegal appropriation of public property in support of religion.”
Brady Henderson, ACLU of Oklahoma legal director, said this case was filed for the same reason as the case that led to the removal of the Capitol monument. It was filed to “protect an important limitation on government power,” he said.
Richeson said supporters knew there would be some controversy over the monument. But he said the Ten Commandments are part of history.
Supporters of the Capitol monument made the same argument.
Blevins said there is strong support in the community for keeping the monument on the courthouse lawn.
The Capitol case was not the first the ACLU had brought against a government entity in Oklahoma to challenge the placement of a Ten Commandments monument on government property — and it was not the first such case it had won.
The ACLU, the ACLU of Oklahoma and a Haskell County resident filed a lawsuit challenging the display of such a monument on the Haskell County Courthouse lawn in Stigler in October 2005, a little over a year after the Haskell County commissioners had approved its placement.
In March 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a unanimous June 2009 decision by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that the Haskell County Ten Commandments monument’s placement was unconstitutional and had to be removed.
The 10th Circuit’s decision said the county commissioners advanced their personal religious beliefs by erecting the monument.
In their ruling, the 10th Circuit judges wrote, “In the unique factual setting of a small community like Haskell County,” the Christian origins of the monument “tended to strongly reflect a government endorsement of religion.”
In July 2010, a settlement was reached in which Haskell County had to pay the ACLU of Oklahoma $199,000, covering costs and attorney fees.
In April 2013, the LeFlore County commissioners decided not to construct a Ten Commandments monument on their courthouse lawn in Poteau, acknowledging that it could lead to a lawsuit that the county probably couldn’t win.
The LeFlore County commissioners initially had approved the monument in 2009 but said in 2013 that they had a responsibility as stewards of taxpayer money and that they couldn’t justify the cost of defending a lawsuit.
