Court to tackle Commandments cases

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court, which has been closely split on religious issues, announced yesterday that it will decide whether a government display of the Ten Commandments at public buildings violates the First Amendment's ban on ''an establishment of religion."

Plaques and monuments depicting the biblical commandments stand at the center of the continuing dispute over the meaning of the US Constitution. Does it create a ''wall of separation between church and state," as President Thomas Jefferson once said, or does it permit officials to publicly recognize the nation's religious heritage?

The court said it would take up two Ten Commandment cases.

The first concerns a 6-foot-tall granite monument just outside the main entrance of the Texas State Capitol in Austin. A gift from the Fraternal Order of Eagles in 1961, it stands in the vicinity of several other monuments, including memorials to Texas war veterans.

The Texas case has an unusual history. Thomas Van Orden, a former criminal defense lawyer who became homeless after suffering a mental disorder, brought a suit against the state and argued his own case.

''I didn't sue religion," Van Orden, 59, said last year. ''I sued the state for putting a religious monument on the Capitol grounds."

Though Van Orden lost in the federal courts, the Supreme Court agreed to hear his case. Former University of Southern California law professor Erwin Chemerinsky wrote his appeal.

The second case arose when judges in three eastern Kentucky counties decided in 1999 to post copies of the Ten Commandments in their courthouses. The American Civil Liberties Union sued and won, but the Supreme Court agreed to hear the appeal from the judges.

The outcome at the Supreme Court probably depends on Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. In past cases, she has asked whether the government's action appears to endorse religion. If so, she has voted to strike it down as unconstitutional.

For example, she joined her liberal colleagues in ruling that city officials in Pittsburgh went too far when they displayed a scene of Christ's birth inside the county courthouse during the winter holidays.

O'Connor also joined with the liberals to rule that public school officials may not have a student deliver a prayer over the public address system.

However, she also has voted with her conservative colleagues in upholding the use of state tax money that allowed parents to send their children to religious schools.

These ''vouchers" do not endorse religion, she said, but merely give parents more choices for education.

The other eight justices are more predictable. The conservative faction, led by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, has said the government may aid religion in general, so long as it does not favor a particular faith.

The liberal faction, led by Justice John Paul Stevens, has supported the separation-of-church-and-state principle and says the government may not promote religious views.

It is possible that O'Connor would vote with Rehnquist to uphold the display of the Ten Commandments outside the Texas Capitol because it sits among several other monuments, and also vote with Stevens to strike down the display of the Commandments in the Kentucky courthouse.

The two cases will be argued in February in the Supreme Court, where a partial depiction of the Commandments can be seen in a ceiling panel high above the courtroom.

In 1932, when the Supreme Court building was under construction, Adolph Weinman was hired to sculpt a ceiling panel that depicted 18 famous lawgivers. They include Hammurabi from ancient Babylon, Solomon of ancient Israel, Confucius, Sir William Blackstone, the 18th-century English jurist, and Napoleon Bonaparte, the French emperor.

It also includes Moses, holding a tablet that represents the Ten Commandments.

The court also will decide whether prisoners and others in state custody are entitled to full religious freedom.

The First Amendment protects the ''free exercise of religion," but state officials say they need not make special arrangements for meals and services for inmates who practice nontraditional religions.

Congress sought to protect religious freedom four years ago when it passed a measure saying officials may not ''impose a substantial burden" on the religious rights of inmates. But a US appeals court struck down the law on the grounds that it amounted to favoritism for religion.

The Supreme Court said it will take up a case brought by Ohio inmates who are Satanists and Wiccans to decide the constitutionality of the federal law. The case, Cutter vs. Wilkinson, also will be heard in February.