In United States law, the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, together with that Amendment's Free Exercise Clause, form the constitutional right of freedom of religion. The relevant constitutional text is:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion...
McCreary County v. American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, 545 U.S. 844 (2005), was a case argued before the Supreme Court of the United States on March 2, 2005. At issue was whether the Court should continue to inquire into the purpose behind a religious display and whether evaluation of the government's claim of secular purpose for the religious displays may take evolution into account under an Establishment Clause of the First Amendment analysis.
Thomas David Van Orden was an American lawyer who challenged the constitutionality of displaying the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the Texas Capitol under the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Van Orden v. Perry, 125 S. Ct. 2854 (2005).
Van Orden v. Perry, 545 U.S. 677 (2005), was a United States Supreme Court case involving whether a display of the Ten Commandments on a monument given to the government at the Texas State Capitol in Austin violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
Mary Fallin is an American politician who served as the 27th governor of Oklahoma from 2011 to 2019. A member of the Republican Party, she was elected in 2010 and reelected in 2014. She was the first and so far only woman to be elected governor of Oklahoma. She was the first woman to represent Oklahoma in Congress since Alice Mary Robertson in 1920.
The Supreme Court of Oklahoma is a court of appeal for non-criminal cases, one of the two highest judicial bodies in the U.S. state of Oklahoma, and leads the judiciary of Oklahoma, the judicial branch of the government of Oklahoma.
Glassroth v. Moore, 335 F.3d 1282, and its companion case Maddox and Howard v. Moore, 229 F. Supp. 2d 1290, is a decision from the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit that held a 21⁄2 ton granite monument of the Ten Commandments placed in the rotunda of the Heflin-Torbert Judicial Building in Montgomery, Alabama by then-Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore was a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
The Thomas More Law Center is a Christian, conservative, nonprofit, public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and active throughout the United States. According to its website, its goals are to "preserve America's Judeo-Christian heritage, defend the religious freedom of Christians, restore time-honored moral and family values, protect the sanctity of human life, and promote a strong national defense and a free and sovereign United States of America."
In Stone v. Graham, 449 U.S. 39 (1980), the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that a Kentucky statute was unconstitutional and in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, because it lacked a nonreligious, legislative purpose. The statute required the posting of a copy of the Ten Commandments on the wall of each public classroom in the state. The copies of the Ten Commandments were purchased with private funding, but the Court ruled that because they were being placed in public classrooms they were in violation of the First Amendment.
James Winchester is an American lawyer and judge who is currently serving as an associate justice of the Oklahoma Supreme Court, District 5. He served a two-year term as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court beginning in 2007. He was reelected to his position in November 2016.
Green v. Haskell County Board of Commissioners, 568 F.3d 784, was a First Amendment case concerning the placing of a Ten Commandments monument on public property, an alleged violation of the separation of church and state.
Capitol Square Review & Advisory Board v. Pinette, 515 U.S. 753 (1995), is a United States Supreme Court case that focused on First Amendment rights and the Establishment Clause. Vincent Pinette, an active member of the Ku Klux Klan in Columbus, Ohio, wanted to place an unattended cross on the lawn of the Capitol Square during the 1993 Christmas season. Pinette and his fellow members of the KKK submitted their request. The advisory board originally denied this request. However, Pinette and the other members of the Ohio Chapter of the Klan fought this decision in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio. The court found in favor of the Klan and the Advisory Board issued the permit. The Board appealed to the United States Court of Appeals, which affirmed the decision of the district court. The board made one last petition to the Supreme Court where the decision was made, by a vote of seven to two, that the Klan was permitted to display the cross at the public forum.
Stanley Jason Rapert is an American politician from the state of Arkansas, who since 2011 has been a Republican member of the Arkansas State Senate for District 35.
James Michael Ritze is an American politician from the state of Oklahoma United States. A Republican, Ritze served as a member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives, representing the 80th district, which includes parts of Tulsa and Wagoner counties.
Oklahoma Ballot State Question 790 was a ballot question in Oklahoma during the 2016 Elections that would have removed the Blaine Amendment from the Oklahoma State Constitution. Question 790 was defeated.
The Ten Commandments Monument is an outdoor monument installed on the Arkansas State Capitol grounds in Little Rock, Arkansas, in the United States. The monument is being challenged as unconstitutional by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The ACLU says that the monument demonstrates a religious preference, violating the First Amendment and the religious preference prohibition clause of the Arkansas State Constitution.
The Ten Commandments Monument, authorized by the Oklahoma legislature and approved by the governor in 2009, was installed on the grounds of the Oklahoma State Capitol, in Oklahoma City, in 2012. The mere concept engendered years of political controversy, court suits based on religious freedom of religion issues, destruction in 2014 by a man who drove his car into it, replacement in the same location, and even attempts to remove Supreme Court justices who ruled in 2014 that the monument must be removed to another site. After Governor Mary Fallin, key legislators, and the justices agreed on a substitute site, the monument was removed from the capitol grounds in 2015.
The statue of Baphomet is a bronze sculpture commissioned by The Satanic Temple depicting Baphomet, a winged, goat-headed, humanoid and a symbol of the occult. First unveiled in Detroit in 2015, the statue stands 8.5 feet (2.6 m) tall and features a prominent pentagram as well as two smiling youths gazing up at the seated central figure. Petitions to display the piece on public grounds have resulted in arguments concerning the separation of church and state. Production of the statue, and its initial notoriety, is featured in the documentary Hail Satan? (2019).
The Ten Commandments Monument is installed on the Texas State Capitol grounds in Austin, Texas, United States. The Texas Sunset Red Granite artwork was designed by an unknown artist and erected by the Fraternal Order of Eagles of Texas in 1961. It was the subject of litigation in the Supreme Court case Van Orden v. Perry (2005).
American Legion v. American Humanist Association, 588 U.S. ___ (2019), was a United States Supreme Court case dealing with the separation of church and state related to maintaining the Peace Cross, a World War I memorial shaped after a Latin cross, on government-owned land, though initially built in 1925 with private funds on private lands. The case was a consolidation of two petitions to the court, that of The American Legion who built the cross, and of the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission who own the land and maintain the memorial. Both petitions challenged the Fourth Circuit's ruling that, regardless of the secular purpose the cross was built for in honoring the deceased soldiers, the cross emboldened a religious symbol and had ordered it altered or razed. The Supreme Court reversed the Fourth Circuit's ruling in a 7–2 decision, determining that since the Cross had stood for decades without controversy, it did not violate the Establishment Clause and could remain standing.
