An editorial in today's Lexington Herald-Leader recounts the series of bad decisions that have now left two counties with a bill of nearly half a million dollars – plus interest – for their stubborn church-state violations. It's a good reminder that while elected officials like to pander and grandstand over religion, as if promoting religion was a way of proving their faith, it's often the taxpayers that have to foot the bill.
Their first bad choice was hanging stand-alone copies of the Ten Commandments in their respective courthouses. After the American Civil Liberties Union and local residents filed a suit correctly challenging the displays as an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment's protection of religious freedom, U.S. District Judge Jennifer Coffman ordered the displays removed.
It could have ended there. But fiscal courts in the two counties just kept making bad decisions.
Read the whole thing.
