Ten Commandments plea ordered to a vote in Boise

BOISE – The Idaho Supreme Court ruled Monday that a petition calling for a Ten Commandments display in Julia Davis Park should go to voters.

A group known as the Keep the Commandments Coalition gathered thousands of signatures in support of putting to a public vote a March 2004 decision by the Boise City Council to relocate a monument inscribed with the Ten Commandments from Julia Davis Park to private property at an Episcopal church. But city officials refused to include the initiative on the November 2004 ballot, saying it concerned an administrative decision – instead of a legislative matter – and so wasn’t subject to reversal through an initiative.

The coalition sued, and in October 2004, 4th District Judge Ronald Wilper sided with the city. The coalition appealed, asking the Idaho Supreme Court to overturn the decision and allow removal of the monument to be put to a vote.

In a split decision, the state’s highest court agreed to send the matter to voters. The validity of the initiative can be debated if it passes, the court said.

“The initiative may pass and be the proper subject of an adjudication, or the city council may exercise its authority to amend or reject it,” Chief Justice Gerald Schroeder wrote for the majority.

The court ruled it is still too early for the Idaho Supreme Court to consider whether the initiative would be valid at all.

“Just as the court would not interrupt the legislature in the consideration of a bill prior to enactment, the court will not interrupt the consideration of a properly qualified initiative.”

Elizabeth Duncan, spokeswoman for Mayor Dave Bieter, said the city would go forward with a vote on the initiative “as soon as possible,” though a specific date has not yet been set.

“The mayor and council feel it’s important that the Ten Commandments be displayed in a prominent location where as many people as possible can view it,” Duncan said. “It also needs to be in a safe position where it doesn’t become the cornerstone of a protracted legal battle. Right now it’s in a safe position.”

Bryan Fischer, one of the coalition’s leaders, said he was ecstatic about the ruling.

“All we’ve asked for from day one is our day at the ballot box, and we’re finally going to get it,” he said in a prepared statement. “It’s a shame that the mayor and City Council have spent so much time and money fighting their own citizens over the right to vote.”

Justice Linda Copple Trout dissented from the majority’s opinion, saying she believed the petition did concern an administrative matter, precluding the use of an initiative election.

“The question here is not whether a proposal is constitutional … but whether the initiative election itself would be proper exercise of the people’s power,” she wrote.

Though there is “no bright line rule clearly distinguishing legislative matters from administrative ones,” Trout wrote, the coalition’s request to place a monument in a park is already governed by an existing city plan.

“The legislature has provided that the management of real property owned by a city rests with the judgment of the city council,” she wrote.

“A plan establishing the procedure for the placement of memorial plaques and monuments in city parks was adopted in 1999, five years before the coalition’s petition was submitted to the city.”

The coalition’s attempt to put a Ten Commandments monument in a city park falls under that plan, and so is administrative, Trout found.