2015 Victories: Ten Commandments Defended – Unconstitutional Attacks Defeated

Over the last year the ACLJ has been aggressively engaged in the fight to defend life, liberty, and our heritage as a nation.  Through your support and our tenacious advocacy for faith and freedom, we’ve achieved some monumental victories.

This is the first in a year-end series looking back at a few of the many victories the ACLJ has achieved over the past year.

This year we once again defended the Ten Commandments from an organization intent on diminishing it or having it torn down.  It’s been a legal fight that has lasted nearly a decade.

It’s a case ACLJ Chief Counsel Jay Sekulow argued all the way to the Supreme Court, and won.  Not only did we win, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in our favor.

A win at the Supreme Court is hard to come by, but a 9-0 victory is extraordinarily rare.  In that case, a religious cult called Summum demanded to have a statue of their Seven Aphorisms placed side-by-side with a city’s decade’s old display of the Ten Commandments.

We argued that the city should no more be forced to display this cult’s message or be forced to tear down the Ten Commandments than should the U.S. be forced to display a Statue of Tyranny next to the Statue of Liberty or be forced to tear down her welcoming arms.  The Supreme Court agreed.  Such a result would be not only absurd but unconstitutional.  That was 2009.  After losing at the U.S. Supreme Court, the same religious cult attempted to bring the same suit in Utah state court under the Utah state constitution.

We again aggressively defended the Ten Commandments monument, this time in state court.  Earlier this year, the Utah Supreme Court once again sided with our argument.  And again the court was unanimous.  The Ten Commandments was protected.

It is clear that the Ten Commandments is a vital and historical part of our heritage as a nation.  As such, we will continue to successfully defend it wherever it is attacked.  The law and the Constitution are on our side, and these unanimous rulings at both the Supreme Court and in state court show the importance of this fight.  It’s a major victory for the Ten Commandments and a significant blow to those who seek to remove and ridicule every vestige of our religious history as a nation.

To help the ACLJ continue to have the resources we need to make these victories possible and continue these fights, please consider making a tax-deductible donation to the ACLJ through our year-end Matching Challenge.  Your gift will be doubled dollar-for-dollar through the end of the year.

You will be able to read more in the ACLJ’s 2015 Victories series here.