Freedom of religious expression on public property has always been a thorny First Amendment issue, and a new Ten Commandments display in the town of Stigler, Okla., has drawn national attention.

Last week a unanimous panel of the Tenth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Ten Commandments monument on the Haskell County Courthouse lawn in Stigler violated the First Amendment; Judge Jerome Holmes wrote the opinion.

OCU LAW Professor Michael O’Shea commented in an article by The Journal Record’s Marie Price.

“What will happen when you have a municipal or state government that does everything right, as it were, and the individuals involved with donating the monument do everything right to suggest that the display is for a proper purpose and is not intended to endorse religion or a particular religion, but it’s a new monument?” O’Shea asked. “That’s really where the rubber would meet the road in the context of current Establishment Clause doctrine.”

The full text of the article about the case including Professor O’Shea’s analysis is available on The Journal Record website.