Blog from the Capital

Earlier this week, the 9th Circuit released a decision in a Ten Commandments display lawsuit, trying to interpret the line between the Supreme Court's pair of 2005 decisions in Van Orden (allowing a Texas display) and McCreary (denying one in Kentucky). Here the Appeals Court determined that the display at issue in Everett, WA is constitutional in that it fits the profile of Van Orden, and as such required a much narrower reading of the traditional Lemon test of government's advancement of, or entanglement in, religion. From the decision:

Because the Supreme Court issued McCreary, broadly espousing Lemon, contemporaneously with Van Orden, narrowly eschewing Lemon, we must read the latter as carving out an exception for certain Ten Commandments displays. We cannot say how narrow or broad the “exception” may ultimately be; not all Ten Commandments displays will fit within the exception articulated by Justice Breyer. However, we can say that the exception at least includes the display of the Ten Commandments at issue here.
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Viewing Justice Breyer’s factual analysis side by side with the factual circumstances here, it becomes clear that Card’s case fits within the Van Orden exception.

Those circumstances include: a "secular purpose", a setting that "suggests little or nothing of the sacred", and a "historic lack of complaints".

Reuters has a report here. AU's Rob Boston disagrees with the panel's decision - and the precedent from which it came - here.