Braun asks court to dismiss lawsuit over Ten Commandments display

Indiana Gov. Mike Braun has asked a federal court to dismiss a lawsuit in a long-standing dispute over whether the Ten Commandments should be displayed on the Statehouse lawn.

The U.S. Supreme Court has clearly noted that public monuments to the country’s religious heritage don’t automatically violate the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which prohibits the government from establishing a religion, attorney Joseph Davis said in a press release issued Tuesday.

“It’s high time for Indiana’s monument to take its rightful place on the statehouse lawn,” said Davis, a senior counsel at the law firm Becket, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., that is representing Indiana and specializes in cases concerning religious freedom.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana is trying to stop Braun from displaying the Ten Commandments on the Statehouse lawn, saying such an action would violate the First Amendment understanding of the separation of church and state.

In June, the ACLU filed a motion asking a federal judge to allow an updated complaint in its long-running case against the state for several attempts to place a large limestone monument inscribed with the fundamental Judeo-Christian law on public land.

In May, a federal judge allowed Braun and Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita to reopen the 25-year-old dispute. The judge noted in an order that how the courts assess the Establishment Clause has changed “significantly” since the case began more than 20 years ago.

In 2000, then-Gov. Frank O’Bannon accepted the monument as a gift from the Indiana Limestone Institute to replace a similar monument that had been on the Statehouse lawn for decades before it was vandalized in 1991.

According to court documents, the faces of the monument in question display the religious law, the federal Bill of Rights, and the preamble to the 1851 Indiana Constitution.

However, before the monument could be set, the Indiana Civil Liberties Union (now the ACLU of Indiana) sued O’Bannon and moved for a preliminary injunction to block its placement.

The federal court in Indianapolis approved the injunction. The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals later affirmed the decision and entered a permanent injunction, according to the ACLU.

But the case again found life in December, after Braun and Rokita announced the state had filed a motion, asking the court to lift the injunction.

The case is Indiana Civil Liberties Union, et al., v. Mike Braun, 1:00-cv-00811-SEB-MKK.