Van Orden v. Perry

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Van Orden v. Perry" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (July 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Van Orden v. Perry
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued March 2, 2005 Decided June 27, 2005
Full case name	Thomas Van Orden v. Rick Perry, in his official capacity as Governor of Texas and Chairman, State Preservation Board, et al.
Docket no.	03-1500
Citations	545 U.S. 677 (more) 125 S. Ct. 2854; 162 L. Ed. 2d 607; 2005 U.S. LEXIS 5215; 18 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. S 494
Case history
Prior	Judgment for defendant, 2002 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 26709 (W.D. Tex. Oct. 2, 2002); affirmed, 351 F.3d 173 (5th Cir. 2003); rehearing denied, 89 Fed. Appx. 905 (5th Cir. 2004); cert. granted, 543 U.S. 923 (2004).
Holding
A Ten Commandments monument erected on the grounds of the Texas State Capitol did not violate the Establishment Clause, because the monument, when considered in context, conveyed a historic and social meaning rather than an intrusive religious endorsement.
Court membership
Chief Justice William Rehnquist Associate Justices John P. Stevens · Sandra Day O'Connor Antonin Scalia · Anthony Kennedy David Souter · Clarence Thomas Ruth Bader Ginsburg · Stephen Breyer
Case opinions
Plurality	Rehnquist, joined by Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas
Concurrence	Scalia
Concurrence	Thomas
Concurrence	Breyer (in judgment)
Dissent	Stevens, joined by Ginsburg
Dissent	O'Connor
Dissent	Souter, joined by Stevens, Ginsburg
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. I

Van Orden v. Perry, 545 U.S. 677 (2005), is a United States Supreme Court case involving whether a display of the Ten Commandments on a monument given to the government at the Texas State Capitol in Austin violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

In a suit brought by Thomas Van Orden of Austin, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled in November 2003 that the displays were constitutional, on the grounds that the monument conveyed both a religious and secular message. Van Orden appealed, and in October 2004 the high court agreed to hear the case at the same time as it heard McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky, a similar case challenging a display of the Ten Commandments at two county courthouses in Kentucky.

The Supreme Court ruled on June 27, 2005, by a vote of 5 to 4, that the display was constitutional. The Court chose not to employ the oft-used Lemon test in its analysis, reasoning that the display at issue was a "passive monument."^[1] Instead, the Court looked to "the nature of the monument and ... our Nation's history."^[1] Chief Justice William Rehnquist delivered the plurality opinion of the Court; Justice Stephen Breyer concurred in the judgment but wrote separately. The similar case of McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky was handed down the same day with the opposite result (also with a 5 to 4 decision). The "swing vote" in both cases was Breyer.