(Search terms were “supreme court church and state” and it was like the forth or fifth match.)

I don’t see anything about complaints or lack thereof (but I just skimmed – short attention span right now), so maybe it’s not what you are mentioning. Interestingly, no opinion spoke for the majority of justices, so apparently that means it doesn’t set precedent. Weird! I did not know that.

Wow, the Supreme Court actually said that a gov’t endorsement of religion was constitutional because no one had complained?

My recollection was that it was a religious phrase or symbol on government property that had been there for decades and nobody complained until recently. This was an actual Supreme Court decision that came out in 2007 or 2008. It got a lot of coverage in the press. It was one of two or three decisions that the court announced on the same day. Each decision went a different way, which is one reason it got so much coverage.

I can’t find a reference to it now, because if you search on “separation of church and state” you get a zillion hits. I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t know how to do an efficient search on court decisions.

Over at Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, I did find a court decision from 1986 that seems relevant to the specific case I mentioned in the article. The AU summary says:

Bd. of Trs. v. McCreary

The Court affirmed, without opinion, a lower court decision that held that the village park was a traditional public forum, and therefore, permitting the display of a creche during the Christmas holiday season at virtually no expense to it was not a violation of the Establishment Clause.

If that is, indeed, the new standard, then I agree that it needs to be challenged.

I agree that we should pick our battles and this one seems low on the list. However, I think that it’s vital that complaints be lodged against it. Last year, the Supreme Court had several wishy-washy separation rulings. In one case, they said that a city endorsement of religion was constitutional, because nobody had complained about it in all these years. So now we have precedent by the Supreme Court that some government establishment of religion is OK. Should we let them narrow the First Amendment some more by allowing more places to go unchallenged? If the standard is that no one complained, then it’s time to complain about them all, so none slide by on that loophole.

Yes, if it’s on public land, it’s a violation of the Constitution, but I think it’s probably a pick-your-battles kinda thing to just let it go.

On the other hand, ordering the nativity display taken down actually looks like the ‘War on Christmas’ the conservative loundmouths gripe about.

We need to pick our battles.

Ten Commandments on permanent display in a courthouse? That’s incredibly dangerous, get rid of it immediately.

A privately-funded, very temporary religious display erected at a crossroads? Meh. I might shake my head at the credulity of the whole thing, but I would not be offended by it.

“Purported” to act. That’s because in culturally diverse modern America, there couldn’t possibly be a non-Christian living in a city of 134,000.

…or a Christian who values the idea of separation of church and state. No, impossible!