SCOTUS: Government can play religious favorites

That’s the bottom line from Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling that, just because a Utah city, Pleasant Grove City, has a donated Ten Commandments display, it doesn’t have to allow similar religious monuments from other groups.

Justice Samuel Alito even recognized the danger:

He acknowledged that government ownership of monuments cannot be “sed (as) a subterfuge for favoring certain private speakers over others based on viewpoint.”

Maybe it cannot legally, but it can in actuality. And it will be.

SCOTUS ruled unanimously in overturning the Tenth Circuit Court of Appleals.

Summum, the religious group filing the suit, vowed to carry on the legal battle.

That said, is Summum a nutbar group?

Yes.

Is the First Amendment supposed to allow government to legally pick and choose whether it can define a group as nutbar or not, directly or indirectly?

No.

At least, that’s the way I read it.

Now, over at Washington Monthly, some post commentators say the Supremes did not have a choice, since when Summum appealed from Utah to federal court jurisdiction, it only did so on the Free Speech clause of the First Amendment and NOT the Establishment Clause.

Well, SCOTUS, both in allegedly "liberal activist" and "conservative" majorities, has gone beyond the remit of the grounds of argument of a case at district and appellate levels before. Does not happen a lot. But, it has been done.

If nothing else, Souter could have mentioned more Establishment Clause issues in his separately filed concurrence.

Or, the Court could have done that en banc, while not actually arguing the Estblishment Clause itself, by taking the step of remanding the case back down, with explicit instructions to litigate the Establishment Clause.

As for the way it was actually argued: who becomes/is responsible for the monument's maintenance when the owner dies? And many similar questions.