Rockwall County courthouse in Texas unveils illegal Ten Commandments monument

The display outside the Rockwall County Commissioners Court is a blatant Establishment Clause violation

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In a move that can and should lead to a federal lawsuit, the Rockwall County Commissioners Court in Texas unveiled a massive Ten Commandments monument in front of the building on Saturday. It comes a year after commissioners unanimously passed a resolution to make it happen.

The stand-alone monument, donated by Christian Nationalist Jason Rapert’s American History & Heritage Foundation, exists for no reason other than to promote Christianity and make clear that only one religion is valued by the local government.

The Ten Commandments monument in Rockwall (image via Facebook)

In case there was any doubt that this was about promoting religion, the ceremony featured speeches from Mike Berry of the conservative group First Liberty Institute and multiple Christian pastors. Several county commissioners and state lawmakers also spoke at the ceremony, including former Trump spokesperson (and current State Representative) Katrina Pierson.

"This is a great day for the people of Rockwall County," said Mike Berry of the Plano-based First Liberty Institute. "Displaying the Ten Commandments on public grounds in Texas is consistent with Supreme Court decisions that recognize our religious heritage and the best of the nation's history and traditions."

…

"It is appropriate that during this 250th Anniversary of our Nation's founding, Rockwall County will erect a monument to display the Ten Commandments," [Rockwall County Commissioner Lorne] Liechty said. "May God bless America, the State of Texas, and our wonderful Rockwall County!"

There is, of course, no tradition of putting the Ten Commandments in front of anything, much less doing it for the past 250 years. The Supreme Court hasn’t directly allowed a stand-alone Decalogue either. But that hasn’t stopped conservatives in Texas from lying about it anyway, to the point where the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that posters of the Commandments can be forced to go up in public school classrooms across the state.

First Liberty said on Facebook that their Supreme Court victory “in the Coach Joe Kennedy case paved the way for these monuments to be brought back all across America.” By which they mean the conservative bloc on the Court got rid of the Lemon Test, which helps judges decide if a law violates the Establishment Clause.

Even without that test, though, this monument still obviously violates the Establishment Clause. You don’t need a special set of rules to figure this one out. These people make it sound like the Supreme Court got rid of the Establishment Clause altogether; that’s not the case. (Not yet!)

Nevertheless, an almost identical scenario took place in nearby Tarrant County earlier this year. It’s clear there’s a strategy in place to get these monuments up outside as many courthouses as possible before church/state groups have the ability to get them taken down.

In this case, it began last May when the conservative Commissioners Court voted to place a potential monument outside the courthouse. In defense of it, they argued that it was virtually identical to a monument that sits outside the State Capitol:

The monument will be similar to the Ten Commandments monument that is located on the grounds of the Texas State Capitol, which was approved by the United States Supreme Court in the 2005 case of Van Orden v. Perry.

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FURTHER, RESOLVED, that the monument commemorating the Ten Commandments shall contain the following text, which was displayed on the monument declared constitutional by the United States Supreme Court in Van Orden v Perry, 545 U.S. 677 (2005)

That’s a ridiculous argument, though.

The reason the Supreme Court, in 2005, said the monument at the Texas Capitol could stay up was because it was part of a larger set of displays highlighting “people, ideals, and events that compose Texan identity.”

The monument outside the Rockwall County Courthouse doesn’t even bother with those other displays. For that reason, this monument is more like the one outside a Kentucky courthouse that the Supreme Court deemed unconstitutional that exact same day.

Are the Christians in Rockwall County utterly ignorant of this or do they just hate the Constitution? Good luck figuring out the answer.

It’s irrelevant that this is a privately funded monument because the end result is that it’s on public grounds, suggesting that Christianity is the official religion of the courthouse.

Not only does it promote Christianity, it uses phrasing from the King James Bible, a translation many Christians don’t use. It tells citizens they can’t have other gods before the One True Christian God™. That they can’t make false idols. That they can’t take God’s name in vain. That they must rest on the Sabbath day. That they can’t have sex with people they’re not married to. That they can’t covet what what their neighbors have.

It’s basically a monument listing all the religious rules Senate candidate Ken Paxton has broken. It’s a list of ten things I guarantee most of those Christians who spoke at the unveiling couldn’t recite without prompting.

The fact that this monument is outside a courthouse is appalling for other reasons. To quote criticism made by one Democrat against a separate Ten Commandments bill, “by endorsing a state-sanctioned religion, they undermine the foundational principle of religious freedom upon which the United States was built upon.”

None of this is about history, morality, or the law. It’s about power. Christians in Rockwall County want to make clear that their religion—and only their religion—is valued in civic life. If the Constitution says that’s not permitted, then these people would prefer to rip up the Constitution.

The irony is that it’s completely unnecessary. There’s nothing about justice or public safety in Rockwall County that requires anyone to abide by some religious text. Courts are designed to implement secular law through the use of logic and reason and evidence. Religion plays by different rules entirely. This monument won’t help judges make better decisions; it’ll just send a signal to non-Christians that the law is out to get them and that their own government doesn’t see them as truly equal.

If the donors and lawyers involved in this charade were smarter, they would have at least tried to conceal the obvious Establishment Clause violation. If and when the lawsuits arrive, this won’t be some borderline case. This should be struck down by a judge without hesitation. (At least until some conservative judges decide the law doesn’t matter anymore.)

At the bottom of the monument is another Bible verse: “When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice” (Proverbs 29:2). It’s telling that they left off the rest of that verse, which reads “but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.” Because this is a perfect example of wicked people in positions of authority, ignoring the rules for a secular society in favor of religious dogma that our law properly rejects in nearly every case.

(Portions of this article were published earlier. Because Texas keeps pulling shit like this.)

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