{"id":50158,"date":"2016-09-30T11:27:00","date_gmt":"2016-09-30T16:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/content.findlaw-admin.com\/ability-legal\/supreme\/legal-commentary\/a-small-religion-brings-a-big-first-amendment-question-to-the-supreme-court-when-does-private-religious-speech-become-government-speech.html"},"modified":"2016-09-30T11:27:00","modified_gmt":"2016-09-30T16:27:00","slug":"a-small-religion-brings-a-big-first-amendment-question-to-the-supreme-court-when-does-private-religious-speech-become-government-speech","status":"publish","type":"supreme","link":"https:\/\/supreme.findlaw.com\/legal-commentary\/a-small-religion-brings-a-big-first-amendment-question-to-the-supreme-court-when-does-private-religious-speech-become-government-speech.html","title":{"rendered":"A Small Religion Brings a Big First Amendment Question to the Supreme Court When Does Private Religious Speech Become Government Speech?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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A Small Religion Brings a Big First Amendment Question to the Supreme Court: When Does Private Religious Speech Become Government Speech?<\/h1><\/td>\n <\/tr>\n

By MICHAEL C. DORF<\/h2><\/a><\/td>\n <\/tr>\n

Monday, Apr. 07, 2008<\/td>\n\n <\/tr>\n <\/table>\n \n\n\n

<\/b>Last week, the Supreme Court agreed to review a ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, granting a small religious organization the right to place monuments in two city parks in Utah. The unusual case of Summum v. Pleasant Grove City<\/a> <\/i><\/b>sits awkwardly at the intersection of three First Amendment doctrines: (1) the doctrine establishing the rights of speakers, including religious speakers, in a so-called “public forum”; (2) the doctrine delineating government’s ability, as a speaker itself, to control the content of its message; and (3) the doctrine concerning limits that the Establishment Clause places on government favoritism among religious messages.<\/p>

Plausible arguments can be made both for and against the result reached by the Tenth Circuit. Perhaps more important than how the Court ultimately resolves the case, however, will be the process it uses. The Court may simply try to characterize the conduct in question as either private speech or government speech, and then apply the pre-existing precedents. But a better approach would recognize that the act in question–placement of a monument in a public park by a private religious group–has elements of both private speech and government speech, and that the religious nature of the monument may matter. If viewed from this perspective, the case would remain difficult, but its true stakes would be far more clearly visible.<\/p>

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