The Freedom From Religion Foundation is asking for the removal of an unconstitutional Ten Commandments display at the Jefferson County Courthouse.
FFRF was informed that a Ten Commandments display was recently installed at the courthouse in Mount Vernon, Ill. The display is nearly 6-and-a-half feet tall and sits in the center of the first floor lobby. The display includes a Protestant version of the Ten Commandments, given its particular language and numbering. At the bottom of the display is the biblical quote for Proverbs 21:15, which reads: “When justice is done, it is a joy to the righteous but terror to the evildoers.”
“Government promotion of one particular religion deters the nonreligious and minority religions from accessing important government services,” FFRF Patrick O’Reiley Legal Fellow Hirsh M. Joshi writes to Jefferson County Board Chair Cliff Lindemann.
By displaying this religious text in its courthouses, the county demonstrates a plain and undeniable preference for religion over nonreligion, and Protestant Christianity above all other faiths. Illinois’s Establishment Clause reads: “No person shall be required to attend or support any ministry or place of worship against his consent, nor shall any preference be given by law to any religious denomination or mode of worship.” FFRF is confident that state courts will find that a large Protestant Ten Commandments display by the county demonstrates preference for a religious denomination and mode of worship.
In displaying a gigantic Protestant version of the Ten Commandments along with a bible quote, and not quotes about citizenship or other secular virtues, the county government demonstrates preference for Christianity, FFRF emphasizes. That is unconstitutional. Furthermore, the references to the Christian Bible and Ten Commandments alienate the nearly 37 percent of Americans who are non-Christian, including the 30 percent of Americans who are nonreligious.
FFRF asserts that the display must be removed in order to respect the constitutional rights of all who use the Jefferson County Courthouse.
“A few months ago, I told a Minnesota jail to ‘Repaint and Repent.’ Now an Illinois sheriff has been similarly emboldened for no particular reason,” adds Joshi, a native Illinoisian. “It’s unclear why small-town officials want to push their narrow views on everyone so badly.”
FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor echoes this sentiment.
“It should be obvious to anyone that the First Commandment alone — ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me’ — is the antithesis of our First Amendment, which, by the way, is one of the principles that truly makes America great,” she says. “The county sheriff has no business telling residents of Jefferson County how many gods to worship, or if they should worship one at all.”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with 40,000 members and several chapters across the country, including more than 1,200 members and a chapter in Illinois. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
