Phyllis Schlafly


The Supreme Court banished the Ten Commandments from courthouses in McCreary County v. American Civil Liberties Union, and ruled against private property in Kelo v. City of New London. The term would have been a complete disaster if Justice Stephen G. Breyer, a Clinton-appointee, had not surprisingly voted to save the Ten Commandments displayed on the Texas State Capitol grounds in Van Orden v. Perry.

The grounds of the Texas Capitol include 17 monuments and 21 historical markers honoring "people, ideals, and events that compose Texan identity." One monument was the Ten Commandments, and the Supreme Court was asked to order its removal based on the Establishment Clause. Appointees by Republican Presidents Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and the first George Bush shockingly wanted to censor the Ten Commandments and force Texas to uproot it.

The Ten Commandments had sat there for nearly two generations with nary a complaint, but Justice David H. Souter would have removed it saying that the lack of complaint for decades is meaningless. "Suing a State over religion puts nothing in a plaintiff's pocket ... I doubt that a slow walk to the courthouse, even one that took 40 years, is much evidentiary help in applying the Establishment Clause."

Quite the contrary, the lawsuits against religion now cluttering our courts are fueled by a federal law allowing enormous attorney's fees to the winners. In similar cases, groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union recover extravagant fees at the expense of a town, county, or public school.




Republicans can only shake their head in disbelief, as a Clinton-appointed justice (Breyer) was better than three Republican-appointed justices (Stevens, O'Connor and Souter) on this fundamental issue. Adding insult to injury, Souter (appointed by the first Bush) reaffirmed the much-discredited "Lemon test" that those intolerant of religion have used for three decades to argue their cases.




But five justices rewrote this constitutional clause, taking Wilhelmina Dery's home, which she has lived in since her birth in 1918, and giving it to a corporate development featuring Pfizer Inc. Always reliable Justice Clarence Thomas wrote: "Something has gone seriously awry with this Court's interpretation of the Constitution."

This Term disproves the perception that we have a five-bloc conservative court. There were many 5-4 decisions, but most of those decisions were not rendered by five supposedly conservative justices.




Phyllis Schlafly
