Georgia House Minority Leader J. Glenn Richardson told a gathering of lawyers and journalists Saturday that he will introduce a bill to require all 159 Georgia county courthouses to display the Ten Commandments.
Chief Justice Norman S. Fletcher, a member of the audience at the meeting, said he worries about the proposed bill's constitutionality.
"I don't understand how the state Legislature can trump federal courts," said Fletcher, referring to an 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that ordered the Alabama Supreme Court to remove a monument embossed with the Ten Commandments.
Richardson said he is undaunted by the potential cost of defending court challenges. If the state could pay several million dollars to defend its redistricting map, he said, then why not spend money to defend the Ten Commandments?
Richardson's proposal comes in the wake of a national controversy over former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy S. Moore's attempt to defend placing a 5,280-pound granite Ten Commandments monument in the rotunda of the Alabama Supreme Court.
The 11th Circuit ordered the monument removed. Moore refused and was subsequently expelled from his post.
Moore, who was here Saturday meeting with supporters at a Christian Coalition of Georgia event, is appealing his expulsion.
In Georgia, the issue has played out in several county courthouses. The ACLU is challenging a Ten Commandments display at the Barrow County courthouse and is set to go in front of a federal judge this week in the case.
Richardson's proposal could be the next battle at the Capitol over separation of church and state.
Georgia garnered national headlines last week over a proposal to expunge the word "evolution" from the state's school curriculums.
FOR THE SAKE OF HISTORY
Richardson, a Dallas family and personal injury lawyer, spoke of his proposal at the Georgia Bar Media Conference in Atlanta, an annual meeting of media organizations and the State Bar.
Richardson disclosed his plan on a panel that discussed how to square religious speech and First Amendment rights with the establishment clause.
Richardson called separation of church and state "a fable."
Said Richardson: "The country has a historical perspective on religion, beginning with the Mayflower Compact. The Declaration of Independence and the Pledge of Allegiance consistently referenced God. ... The Ten Commandments form the basis for our deliberative processes."
He said he'll rely on assistance from L. Lynn Hogue, president of the Southeastern Legal Foundation and a Georgia State University College of Law professor, to write a bill that will pass muster constitutionally. Courts have sometimes allowed the display of the Ten Commandments in government buildings if the context is historical, rather than in support of religion.
"The key to any constitutional posting of documents that reflect the religious background of American law has got to be context," Hogue said. He said to get around a possible church-state conflict, he would draft the bill so that the Ten Commandments are part of a larger display with other legal documents, such as the Mayflower Compact, plus a connecting historical narrative.
Panelist Wendell R. Bird of Atlanta's Bird & Loechl noted that there is historic precedent for allowing the mixture of secular and religious symbols.
Bird said that while Moore's display was found unconstitutional, the court seal of Richmond County, which includes a representation of the Ten Commandments, was upheld due to its historic nature.
But Fletcher said he gets "concerned that people are misled and don't understand what the federal courts have been saying. There's a big difference between the Richmond County seal and the Ten Commandments," he added.
Richardson said that he's confident a majority of the House will support his proposed bill, though he's not sure he'll be able to get it to the floor for a vote.
He added that the idea came from his newly instituted Republican House Caucus Policy Council, and he expects to introduce the bill within the next 10 days.
WHICH TRANSLATION WINS?
Neil Kinkopf, a Georgia State University law professor and panelist at Saturday's meeting, reminded the audience that Jews and Christians -- and even Christian denominations -- disagree over how to translate the Ten Commandments from the original Hebrew. It's "not some monolithic thing," Kinkopf said.
"How do you display the Ten Commandments in a way that doesn't take a theological position?" Kinkopf asked.
Richardson said Saturday that he had not heard that there was more than one translation of the Ten Commandments.
But reached Monday, he defended the King James Version of the document as the basis for the Mayflower Compact and English common law, which became the foundation of American law.
"The translation most commonly designated as King James is the version that played the role in the history of the formation of this country," Richardson said.
He said by making this argument, he won't "have to get into a discussion of which version is appropriate, because that one is historically important to the history of the United States."
David E. Hudson, an Augusta lawyer and general counsel for the Georgia Press Association, asked Richardson Saturday why he doesn't get each county to buy a billboard and post the Ten Commandments there, instead of "wasting" the Legislature's time with the bill.
Richardson responded with a smile, "We may very well do that." He added that he doesn't deem it a waste of time if citizens are asking for it.
On Monday, Richardson added, "There has been, as everyone knows, an assault on our religious and historical freedoms by attempting to deny the role God played in the formation of our history as a nation. We should not shy away from it, but should make our history public and teach it," Richardson said.
He called the role the Ten Commandments played in the founding of this country a "fact."
Gerald R. Weber, legal director of the Georgia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the issue is clear to him.
He said while the ACLU hasn't seen the bill, "it certainly rings of unconstitutionality."
A spokesman for Attorney General Thurbert E. Baker said the AG's policy is not to comment on pending legislation.