Blog from the Capital

The First Amendment Center's Tony Mauro previews the upcoming Supreme Court's session, including the Summum public monument case:

Summum is not an establishment-clause case, unlike the Ten Commandments cases the Court has decided in recent years.

Instead, the main question is whether the messages conveyed by such monuments amount to government speech, or the private speech of the religious group that espoused the monument.
...
Further development of the government-speech doctrine is also needed, (Florida International law professor Thomas) Baker says. “There is more government speech than there is law about government speech,” he says.

Of course, some observers believe the case should indeed be about church-state issues. The Baptist Joint Committee and other religious liberty organizations made the argument in a friend-of-the-court brief. The case is slated to be heard on November 12.

[UPDATE: The NYTimes certainly thinks the Summum case is a church-state issue. In an editorial today, the Times urges:"The court should rule that the Constitution does not allow government to favor one religion over another."]