This is one in a series of profiles marking the 60th anniversary of the ACLU of Kentucky’s founding. Each week through December 2015 we will highlight the story of one member, client, case, board or staff member that has been an integral part of our organization’s rich history.
David Howe & Louanne Walker
“I believe that attempts by governmental agencies, at any level, to endorse religious beliefs are an affront to those who do not necessarily share those particular beliefs. I have no quarrel with the Ten Commandments, but they don’t belong in my courthouse.” -- David Howe
In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a historic ruling in a Kentucky Ten Commandments case that affirmed religious liberty principles in the strongest of terms. The case started in 1999 when Pulaski and McCreary county officials posted framed copies of the Ten Commandments in their respective courthouses. The ACLU of Kentucky, on behalf of residents in those counties, filed suit alleging the displays violated the Establishment Clause. After the suit was filed, the counties supplemented their displays with additional documents that “were largely religious in nature,” in an attempt to avoid First Amendment liability. Then, after the ACLU-KY obtained a preliminary injunction barring the counties from posting either of these displays, the counties then erected their third displays-the Foundations of American Law and Government displays.
Those displays consisted of “historical documents,” including American (and earlier Colonial and British) political and patriotic documents, and the Ten Commandments. U.S District Judge Jennifer B. Coffman again granted a preliminary injunction barring these displays because their history showed the counties’ purpose in erecting them was predominantly religious in nature. The counties appealed the injunction barring the third displays, but both the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Judge Coffman’s preliminary injunction.
In doing so, the Supreme Court found the displays violated the Constitution, using some of the most powerful language in years on the question of the government’s role in religion and society. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s concurrence with the 5-4 majority said, in part, “Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must therefore answer a difficult question: Why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?” She went on to write, “When the government associates one set of religious beliefs with the state and identifies non-adherents as outsiders, it encroaches upon the individual’s decision about whether and how to worship.”
Courageous clients like David Howe and Louanne Walker from McCreary County bravely stepped forward to stand against something they knew to be wrong. Their actions took their case to the highest court in the land, where justices once again affirmed for the entire nation that the government cannot be used as a tool to promote one faith over another.