WASHINGTON (ABP) — The Supreme Court has declined an attempt to have the words “In God We Trust” removed from the front of a North Carolina county government building.
The justices declined, without comment, Nov. 14 to hear a case about the Davidson County Government Center in Lexington, N.C. Two local attorneys who regularly do business at the building had sued the county, saying the inscription of the national motto was a violation of the First Amendment's ban on government establishment of religion.
County commissioners voted to add the inscription to the building's façade in 2002. According to court papers, it was paid for by donations from individuals and local churches, and those who spoke in favor of it at the meeting where it was considered cited religious reasons for supporting it as well as the secular rationale that it is the national motto. It is written in 18-inch-high letters — larger than the name of the building — according to the plaintiffs.
In 2004, a federal district court said the inscription's opponents had not proven that the inscription was created with an insufficiently secular purpose or that it unconstitutionally endorsed or caused entanglement with religion. A unanimous three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld their decision earlier this year.
“In this situation, the reasonable observer must be deemed aware of the patriotic uses, both historical and present, of the phrase 'In God We Trust,'” said Judge Robert King.
He noted that the phrase has appeared on American coinage since the mid-1800s, and was made the official national motto by Congress in 1956. It also is inscribed above the speaker's rostrum in the House of Representatives, and above the main door to the Senate floor, King pointed out.
“[W]e are obliged to assess the [county] board's use of the national motto on the façade of the Government Center in its full context — as a statement with religious content, and as one with legitimate secular associations born of its consistent use on coins and currency, and as the national motto,” King wrote.
The court was divided over displays of the Ten Commandments on government property in two rulings earlier this year. In one, the court found a monument to the commandments on the Texas Capitol grounds in Austin acceptable, but ruled the opposite way on much newer displays in two Kentucky courthouses.
Nonetheless, the justices did not record any dissent in turning away the North Carolina case. It is Lambeth v. Board of Commissioners of Davidson County, No. 05-203.