By Jessica Russak-Hoffman, JNS
A monument, replacing one that was vandalized, has stood outside a church for more than two decades as the court weighs whether it can be displayed at the Statehouse.
Indiana Gov. Mike Braun, a Republican, asked the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana to allow a Ten Commandments monument on the lawn of the Statehouse, the state Capitol.
The request, which argued that U.S. Supreme Court rulings have removed the legal basis for excluding the Ten Commandments, was filed on Monday.
A Ten Commandments monument stood on the grounds from 1958 until a vandal destroyed it in 1991. Indiana proposed a replacement that would also display the Bill of Rights and the preamble to the state’s 1851 Constitution.
The Indiana Civil Liberties Union and other plaintiffs sued to stop the installation, which they said would violate the First Amendment ban on the government establishing religion.
A court blocked the installation in 2000. A permanent injunction followed two years later.
The replacement monument has spent more than two decades outside a church in Bedford, Ind., according to Becket, which represents Braun alongside the Indiana attorney general’s office.
“The ACLU is just trying to finish in the courts what the vandal started at the statehouse,” stated Joseph Davis, senior counsel at Becket.
