Supremes hears religious freedom of speech case
Danial Nasaw, Washington - guardian.co.uk | In Pleasant Grove, Utah, one person’s religious monument seems to be another’s eyesore, and today, the US supreme court heard arguments on whether the city may keep a particular monument out of a public park.
In question is a rendering of the Seven Aphorisms of Summum which the Summum religious group sought to donate to Pleasant Grove for display in a city park, beside a monument of the Ten Commandments.
The case in America’s highest court tests whether a government body can choose what is displayed on public land without infringing on private groups’ right to freedom of speech under the first amendment to the US Constitution.
Lawyers for both sides have filed briefs with the court, and today fleshed out those arguments under intense questioning by the nine justices of the supreme court.
Representing the city is a conservative legal group, American Centre for Law and Justice, which argues that the city is not obligated to display any and all monuments offered.
“In short,” the group argues,>>>>Read the Full Article
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November 24th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
First, this would be a non-issue is there were no ‘public’ parks or any other public property, for that matter. It would then be a case of the right of the person who owns that property to do with it as he/she pleases.
However, even if one concedes that the property should belong to the ‘public’, the city employees have the current stewardship over that property. Ayn Rand wrote an extremely inciteful article in her book entitled ‘Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal’ called ‘The Cashing In: The Student Rebellion’ in which she explains that even though every member of ‘the public’ supposedly ‘owns’ public property (which was the University of California at Berkeley in this article), that the Administration had stewardship over that property and was responsible for what goes on in it. Therefore, it could be argued that the steward of the public property should have control over the use of it.
Another thing to think about is that not providing a forum for the exercise of 1st Amendment Free-Speech rights is not the same as censorship. Censorship can only happen when the individual or group has the right to control the property which they want to use and the government stops them from doing so.
It becomes a very sticky situation when you get into the realm of public property, unfortunately and there are valid arguments on both sides of the issue, I think.
November 26th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
I don’t have any experience it the rights of a city and public property. Based on what I have read I would be inclined to say that the city has the right to reject any petition for public display of private beliefs. I believe that rather than trying to force people to accept ones beliefs against their will, a person could migrate to be around others that have similar beliefs as they do.