By Lisa Cornwell
The Associated Press

CINCINNATI - Three Kentucky counties ordered to remove displays of the Ten Commandments at courthouses and a school asked a federal appeals court panel Wednesday to overturn that order and allow the displays.

In a preliminary ruling in June 2001, U.S. District Judge Jennifer Coffman of the Eastern District of Kentucky ordered the Ten Commandments removed from displays at courthouses in McCreary and Pulaski counties and on school property in Harlan County. The American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky had asked for the preliminary injunction, arguing that the displays of the Ten Commandments violated the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution by endorsing religion.

Judge Coffman said in her ruling that the purpose and the effect of displaying the Ten Commandments was "religious in nature." She said that the history of the Ten Commandments displays, which originally were posted separately at the courthouses and schools and then were displayed as part of a group of documents, "bolstered the reasonable observer's perception of the state endorsement of religion."

The Kentucky counties appealed that ruling to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati.