By John Nolan
The Associated Press

A Mansfield judge should be able to display the Ten Commandments in his courtroom because they have a secular significance as the foundation for some modern laws, his attorney told a federal appeals court Friday.

Attorney Frank Manion said a lower court erred last year when it ordered Richland County Common Pleas Judge James DeWeese to remove a framed poster of the commandments. The poster, which has been removed, and a copy of the Bill of Rights displayed in the courtroom were an educational secular exhibit, he said.

Manion told the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that the Ten Commandments can be acceptable in a government building because they do not have a strictly religious significance. He cited friezes or murals that depict the Ten Commandments, angels and Moses in federal courthouses in Indianapolis and Cleveland and at the U.S. Supreme Court.

"This text has had an enormous secular impact down through the ages," Manion said.

Raymond Vasvari, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, argued that the Ten Commandments are a religious document and displaying them in a courtroom would violate the Constitution by implying a government endorsement of religion.

"The reasonable observer is left with an impression that this document is special by its placement in the courtroom," Vasvari said.

U.S. District Judge Kathleen O'Malley ruled in June 2002 that DeWeese violated the Constitution by posting the Ten Commandments "because the debate he seeks to foster is inherently religious in character."

A three-judge panel took the case under review and did not say when it will rule.

Judge Joseph Hood questioned Manion's defense of the display.

"I keep a rosary in my desk. I say the rosary often in my office," Hood told Manion. "That doesn't affect that I tell people not to say the rosary in my courtroom."

Manion said the rosary has only a religious significance.

Manion represents the American Center for Law and Justice, a public-interest law firm.

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On the Net:

American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio: http://www.acluohio.org

American Center for Law and Justice: http://www.aclj.org