A federal appeals court has ruled that Bloomfield’s Ten Commandments monument violates the U.S. Constitution, but a lawyer for the northwestern New Mexico city says it may appeal the ruling.
The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision Wednesday said Bloomfield’s monument violates a First Amendment prohibition against endorsing religion partly because of the apparent motivation in allowing installation of the monument on a lawn in front of City Hall.
Attorney Jonathan Scruggs of the Alliance Defending Freedom, an advocacy group defending the city in the case, said Bloomfield may appeal the 10th U.S. Circuit ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Bloomfield City Council approved a now-former councilor’s request for approval of placement of a Ten Commandments monument. The council then arranged for construction of the 3,400-pound memorial, and churches made donations to pay for it.
The 10th Circuit said circumstances may permit some government displays of the Ten Commandments to pass constitutional muster but that wasn’t so with Bloomfield’s monument.
Given the fundraising, the monument’s plainly religious text and religious aspects of the installation ceremony, “any reasonable and objective observer would glean an apparent religious motivation from these circumstances,” the 10th Circuit decision stated.
The case stems from a 2012 lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of by two residents who practice the Wiccan religion and who said they were offended by the monument.
The ACLU supports the right of individuals and organizations to create religious displays on private property, but “Bloomfield shouldn’t be in the business of deciding which set of beliefs should be favored from among the diverse religious traditions and beliefs held by its citizens,” said Peter Simonson, executive director of ACLU of New Mexico.
Scruggs said a constitutional violation doesn’t occur simply because a person encounters speech he finds disagreeable. “In this case, a Ten Commandments monument nestled among many other monuments honoring significant documents in American history shouldn’t be attacked simply because two people feel offended by it.”
Bloomfield argued that the monument was permissible because it was a private person’s speech in a public forum, but the 10th Circuit said the Supreme Court has previously ruled that permanent monuments constitute speech by government, even when a monument was donated a nongovernmental individual or entity.
