County appeals court's decision on Commandments marker

By Doug Russell, News Editor

STIGLER, June 25 — Haskell County commissioners are appealing a ruling that says a monument of the Ten Commandments on the courthouse lawn is unconstitutional.

Commissioners met in executive session with an attorney Monday morning, stating after the session that they had decided to appeal a federal court’s decision. The appeal, asking for a full hearing from all 12 members of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, rather than a three-judge panel, asserts that the court’s June 8 ruling is in direct conflict with a 2005 Supreme Court ruling that allowed a similar monument to remain at the Texas state capitol.

The three-judge panel had concluded that the monument in Stigler is unconstitutional because its primary purpose is to promote religion.

Through their attorneys at the Alliance Defense Fund, which is representing Haskell County in the case, commissioners said that three other federal appeals courts have upheld similar monuments in other parts of the country and “In fact, this is the first and only circuit to strike down a Ten Commandments monument” since 2005.

According to its Web site, the Alliance Defense Fund “is a servant organization that provides the resources that will keep the door open for the spread of the Gospel through the legal defense and advocacy of religious freedom, the sanctity of human life, and traditional family values.” Fund members believe that the Bible is the “inspired, infallible, authoritative Word of God” and, through its legal division, for 15 years the ADF has been fighting court cases across the country that it feels threaten religious freedom, the sanctity of life and marriage and the family.

The case had been taken to court by Haskell County resident James Green, who said he was concerned by the commissioners’ statements about the monument because “they seemed to be strongly supporting the religious aspects of the monument as a body” and that he was concerned that he or others who did not believe the same as they would be treated differently or more harshly than those who did.

The American Civil Liberties Union took the case on Green’s behalf.

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