As one person stated on the local news channel “just don’t read it if it offends you.” These battles will continue in concerns of religious belief on public/government land. As Justice O’Connor was stated “Allowing government to be a potential mouthpiece for competing religious ideas risks the sort of division that might easily spill over into suppression of rival beliefs. Tying secular and religious authority together poses risks to both.” – PB/TK
Ten Commandments to be removed from Valley High School in New Kensington – by Emily Balser | Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2017
The Ten Commandments monument will be removed from Valley Junior-Senior High School, after district officials reached a settlement in a lawsuit claiming the district violated the constitutionally required separation of church and state.
“In order to take the high road, as they say, we compromised and agreed to remove the monument,” said New Kensington-Arnold School District Superintendent John Pallone.
Under an agreement between the district and the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation announced Tuesday, the district agreed to remove the stone monument containing the Commandments within 30 days from Feb. 15.
The agreement ends a federal lawsuit filed in September 2012 by Marie Schaub, who claimed the monument was a strictly religious symbol and was offensive to herself and her daughter, who was a Valley High School student at the time.
Schaub describes herself as an atheist.
In July 2015, a federal judge dismissed Schaub’s suit, ruling that, because Schaub had withdrawn her daughter from Valley High School, she did not have standing to file such a suit.
But a month later, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated Schaub’s lawsuit, ruling that withdrawing her daughter from school to avoid having to see the monument daily was proof of “injury” from the presence of the religious symbol.
Continue to triblive.com article: http://triblive.com/local/valleynewsdispatch/11974919-74/monument-district-valley
