A Stitch in Haste

Attributed to Scalia in yesterday’s oral arguments for Pleasant Grove City v. Summum:

“You can’t run a museum if you have to accept everything, right?”

Right — Which is exactly why the government should not be running museums in the first place.

As for the outcome of this bizarre case, I think Chief Corky Roberts summed it up best:

“You’re really just picking your poison. The more you say that the monument is ‘government speech’ to get out of the Free Speech Clause, the more you’re walking into a trap under the Establishment Clause. … What is the government doing supporting the Ten Commandments?”

See also Dalia Lithwick’s apocrypha:

Summum isn’t before the court as a religion case. It was brought as a free speech case, and, as Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice learns about three minutes into oral argument this morning, if he wins this case as a result of the court’s free speech jurisprudence, he will be back in five years to lose it under the court’s religion doctrine. The more zealously the city claims ownership of its Ten Commandments monument, the more it looks to be promoting religion in violation of the Constitution’s Establishment Clause.

Sounds exactly right. Stay tuned…

Previously:
–Linkfest: Two More Decalogue Cases