Ruling may not settle Boise dispute

BOISE – City officials who removed a Ten Commandments monument from a park last year and a Christian group that wants it put back both found something to like in Monday’s U.S. Supreme Court rulings on such monuments elsewhere in the country.

The high court ruled that displaying the Ten Commandments on government property is constitutionally permissible in some cases but not others, leaving future disputes to be settled case by case.

In two rulings, both 5-4, the justices held that Ten Commandments displays in two Kentucky courthouses cross the line between separation of church and state, and that it is constitutionally permissible to display the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the Texas Capitol, where there are 17 monuments.

Each such exhibit demands separate scrutiny to determine whether it amounts to government promotion of religion, the court held.

In March 2004, Boise Mayor Dave Bieter and the City Council agreed to remove a 40-year-old granite monument from Julia Davis Park. They did so in an effort to avoid a lawsuit from an anti-gay preacher, who wanted a monument of his own placed in the park.

The Keep the Commandments Coalition, which includes southern Idaho religious leaders, fought the decision and organized a March 29, 2004, protest that resulted in the arrest of 11 people who tried to stop city workers from carting off the monument.

At a news conference Monday on the Boise City Hall steps, the coalition said the Texas ruling paves the way for the Boise marker’s return.

“We feel our position has been vindicated,” said Brandi Swindell, one of the protesters arrested last year. “We hope we can move forward.”

Bieter said the Texas case differed from the Boise one because it involved one of more than a dozen monuments in a 22-acre park displayed in a historical context that transcended the Ten Commandments’ religious origins.

Michael Zuzel, a spokesman for the Boise mayor, said this city’s case more closely mirrors the Kentucky ruling, in which freestanding Ten Commandments displays adorned courthouses. As a result, Bieter is satisfied with the decision to remove the Boise monument – and has no plans to revisit the issue.

“That ruling vindicates the position of the city because there was no historical context at Julia Davis Park,” Zuzel said. “It (the Boise monument) was just a religious monument on public property.”

The monument is now displayed at the St. Michael’s Episcopal Cathedral, across a street from the Statehouse in Idaho’s capital.

Since the city does not own the Ten Commandments monument – the church bought it for $10 from the Fraternal Order of Eagles, which had originally erected the tablet in 1965 – neither municipal officials nor monument advocates have standing to call for its return, Zuzel said.

Rev. Brian Fischer, who helps lead the Keep the Commandments Coalition, said he plans to ask the church to help return the monument to the park. Otherwise, the group might petition the Boise Parks Department for city officials to allow a new monument, he said.

Cary Colaianni, Boise city attorney, said the decision by the Supreme Court addresses only removal of existing monuments from public property, not the placement of new ones.

“So their (monument advocates’) case would be completely without legal support,” Colaianni said. “There are no cases that would require a municipality to place a monument on public property.”