[JURIST] The US Supreme Court has ruled that the Ten Commandments cannot be displayed in courthouses. The US Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled in McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky [Northwestern University backgrounder] that Kentucky counties that had put framed copies of the Ten Commandments in county courthouses and schools were in violation of the Establishment Clause because they were predominantly religious had the effect of endorsing religion. Read the Court's opinion [PDF] written by Justice Souter, with a dissent by Justice Scalia. AP has more.

The issue of Commandments displays – which profoundly divides religious conservatives and liberals and has come up in repeated court contests – was recently highlighted in the case of former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore [advocacy website], who was removed from office last year by Alabama's judicial ethics board after he refused to comply with a federal court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument he had placed in the rotunda of the his state's courthouse.