The Associated Press

WEST UNION - Activists asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to review an appeals court's ruling that monuments displaying the Ten Commandments cannot be located at Adams County's public schools.

The American Center for Law and Justice said it filed a petition asking the court to overturn the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' Jan. 12 ruling that the Ten Commandments could not be displayed on the grounds of the county's four public high schools.

"We believe the federal appeals court got it wrong and that the Supreme Court now needs to step in to clarify an increasingly confusing area of the law," said Jay Sekulow, lawyer for the American Center for Law and Justice, a public-interest law firm in Virginia Beach, Va., that represents the Adams County/Ohio Valley school district.

Two federal courts have upheld the American Civil Liberties Union's arguments that the commandments' presence on public property violates the Constitution by making it appear that government was endorsing a religion.

The Appeals Court in January rejected arguments by the district and clergy that the commandments are the foundation of today's secular law and may be displayed on school grounds alongside other historic documents.

Members of the clergy donated the monuments in 1997. They were ordered removed in 2003.