Updating an issue we’ve blogged about before, the Supreme Court has ruled that it is all right for a town in Utah to reject a monument from a New Age sect called Summum, even though it accepted a monument of the Ten Commandments. From washingtonpost.com:
The Supreme Court [Wednesday] unanimously agreed that permanent monuments in public parks are a form of government speech and that a small town in Utah was within its rights to reject an offer from a little-known religious group to have its “Seven Aphorisms” placed next to the Ten Commandments.
In a decision closely watched by government officials across the nation, the justices said officials in Pleasant Grove, Utah, did not violate the First Amendment rights of the Summum religious order by rejecting its monument.
Permanent monuments in city parks, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote for the court, are erected “for the purpose of presenting the image of the City that it wishes to project to all who frequent the park,” and thus governments can decide for themselves which to erect, which to accept from others and which to turn down.
I never thought of the government having free speech!
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