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Summer of DecaloguesWhen is a Ten Commandments display unconstitutional?

Posted Friday, July 25, 2003, at 1:27 PM ET

It's starting to be the Summer of Decalogues. You probably already know about Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, who's appealing directly to the Supreme Court a federal court decision finding his Ten Commandments display in the court's rotunda unconstitutional.

But a $1 suit has also just been filed in Everett, Wash., over a granite monument on public property, and there are rumblings about an impending suit in Phoenix, Ariz. On Thursday, city officials in Kansas City, Kan., voted to remove their public Decalogue from its location in front of a courthouse, and a Miles City, Mont.,* group is trying to save its display.

Last December, Laura Hodes' slide show laid out the difference between a Ten Commandments display that is constitutionally sound and one that isn't.

Correction, July 18, 2003: This "Recycled" originally misstated the location of the Montana display as Billings, Mont.

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