The Freedom From Religion Foundation is urging the McDowell County Board of Commissioners in North Carolina to abandon an unconstitutional proposal to install Ten Commandments displays on the courthouse lawn and inside county-owned buildings.

At the board’s Dec. 8 meeting, Board Chair Tony Brown introduced a surprise motion, without prior legal review, calling upon the county to place government-sponsored copies of the Ten Commandments on public property. Brown justified the proposal by declaring:

“Our original laws and Constitution was [sic] written by men who believed in the laws of God. And the laws of God were written in stone with God’s finger on Mount Sinai and given to Moses. These laws were provided by God, and they have given us a roadmap to follow. It seems like over time we have drifted away from the principles that make this nation what it is.”

This overtly religious rationale is precisely why the display would violate the First Amendment, says the national state/church watchdog.

“Government officials cannot use their public office to impose religious doctrine on their constituents,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “McDowell County has no right to tell its citizens which gods to worship, how many gods to worship or whether to worship any Gods at all. The First Commandment shows so clearly why this proposed action violates the First Amendment.”

The board initially voted 3–2 to approve the displays, but later wisely agreed to table the motion pending the county attorney’s review of its legality. FFRF says the legal question is not a close one.
In a letter sent to the commissioners, FFRF explains that federal courts have repeatedly struck down government-initiated Ten Commandments displays.

The religious message of the Ten Commandments is obvious. As the Supreme Court explained in McCreary County. v. ACLU: “[The Ten Commandments] proclaim the existence of a monotheistic god (no other gods). They regulate details of religious obligation (no graven images, no sabbath breaking, no vain oath swearing). And they unmistakably rest even the universally accepted prohibitions (as against murder, theft, and the like) on the sanction of the divinity proclaimed at the beginning of the text.” (545 U.S. 844 (2005))

“Installing new Ten Commandments displays on county property will violate the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, even if the Board attempts to use history as a pretext for the display,” writes FFRF legal fellow Charlotte Gude. “When a government body takes the initiative to display a religious text on government property, it demonstrates a plain and undeniable preference for religion over nonreligion, and for those religions which subscribe to the Ten Commandments above all other faiths, and for those Christian sects who believe in the particular chosen version of the Ten Commandments over other denominations, whose versions may differ.”

The proposed displays would also needlessly alienate the nearly 38 percent of Americans who are non-Christian, including almost one-third of adults who are religiously unaffiliated. A recent major survey shows that a robust 26 percent of North Carolinians are unaffiliated, and another five percent belong to non-Christian religions.

“Refraining from posting religious texts on government property costs nothing, excludes no one and honors everyone’s freedom of conscience,” Gaylor adds.

FFRF is asking the Board of Commissioners to drop the proposal and ensure that county property remains welcoming to all residents, regardless of their beliefs or nonbelief.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with 42,000 members nationwide, including nearly 1,000 members in North Carolina. FFRF’s purposes are to defend the constitutional principle of separation between church and state, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.

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