Continuing Controversy Over Ten Commandments and Municipal Buildings

October 24, 2002

Source: The Associated Press

On October 24, 2002 The Associated Press reported that "an attorney seeking to remove a Ten Commandments monument from Alabama's Judicial Building told a federal judge yesterday that the state's chief justice installed it to promote his own religious beliefs... But lawyers for Chief Justice Roy Moore, a conservative Christian who says the commandments are the moral foundation of American law, argued that the monument is simply an acknowledgment of God and does not force anyone to follow Moore's religious beliefs... There have been conflicting federal court rulings on similar church-state issues recently and legal experts have said the Alabama case may be a key part of an eventual landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision."