ACLU of Indiana Challenges Governor Braun’s Plan to Place Ten Commandments Monument at Statehouse

INDIANAPOLIS — The ACLU of Indiana is challenging Governor Mike Braun’s renewed effort to place a Ten Commandments monument on the Indiana Statehouse lawn, more than two decades after federal courts blocked the same monument from being displayed there.

Today, the ACLU of Indiana filed a motion asking the court to allow an updated complaint in the long-running case, after Governor Braun announced plans to move the monument from private church property to the Statehouse lawn.

In 2000, then-Governor Frank O’Bannon announced that the State would place a large limestone monument inscribed with the Ten Commandments on the south lawn of the Indiana Statehouse. The monument was never placed there because a federal court blocked the display, finding that it violated the First Amendment. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals later affirmed that decision, and the court entered a permanent injunction preventing the monument from being placed at the Statehouse.

Since then, the monument has remained on private church property in Bedford, Indiana, for more than two decades. However, the federal court recently granted the Governor’s motion to reopen the case.

The ACLU of Indiana’s complaint asks the court to declare Governor Braun’s plan unconstitutional and to continue blocking the State from placing a government-endorsed religious display at the seat of Indiana government.

“No one is questioning the right of a church, home, or private organization to display the Ten Commandments,” said Ken Falk, Legal Director at the ACLU of Indiana. “But when the State puts that text on the lawn of the Statehouse, it is no longer private expression. It becomes a government-endorsed message about religion, and the First Amendment does not allow the State to send that message.”

The complaint can be found here.