[JURIST] Oklahoma County District Judge Thomas Prince [official profile] ruled [court documents] Friday that a privately funded Ten Commandments monument on the grounds of the Oklahoma Capitol Building does not violate the state’s constitution. The monument was erected [AP report] in 2012 after gaining approval in 2009 from the state legislature. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the ACLU of Oklahoma (ACLU-OK) [advocacy websites] originally filed the lawsuit [JURIST report] in August 2013. In a statement [text] released by the ACLU-OK, Legal Director Brady Henderson indicated the group intends to appeal the decision to the Oklahoma Supreme Court, stating that the group does not “find the text of the monument offensive,” but find it “offensive” that the “sacred document has been hijacked by politicians.” Attorney General Scott Pruitt praised the decision [press release] citing the US Supreme Court’s 2005 decision to uphold the constitutionality of a similar monument on the grounds of the Texas state Capitol.

Ten Commandments displays have been the subject of legal controversy in recent years. In August a judge for the US District Court for the District of New Mexico ruled [JURIST report that a New Mexico city must remove a Ten Commandments monument placed outside of Bloomfield city hall. The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit [official website] in February 2011 upheld a lower court ruling barring the Ten Commandments [JURIST report] from being displayed in an Ohio courthouse. The Sixth Circuit in June 2010 upheld an injunction against similar displays [JURIST report] in two Kentucky courthouses. A month earlier the same court denied an en banc rehearing in another case [opinion, PDF] involving the display of the Ten Commandments in a Grayson County, Kentucky, courthouse. The court found the display to be constitutional because it presented a valid secular purpose from the outset.