SCOTUS STAYS AWAY

AP reports,

The Supreme Court refused Monday to enter the long-running fight over an enormous monument depicting the Ten Commandments and the renegade judge who wants to put it back on display in an Alabama courthouse.

The court quietly rejected appeals from suspended Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, who had argued the monument properly acknowledges “God as the source of the community morality so essential to a self-governing society.”

Lower federal courts ruled Moore violated the Constitution’s ban on government promotion of religion by placing the 5,300-pound granite monument in the rotunda of the state Judicial Building. In two appeals to the Supreme Court, Moore argued that lower federal courts do not have authority over a state’s chief justice.

Since this is all pretty well settled case law at this point, there’s really no reason for SCOTUS to have weighed in at this point, especially since it seems to have been taken care of by Alabama’s own review procedures.

FILED UNDER: Law and the Courts, Religion, ,
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.