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A religious organization is hoping to preserve its most recent legal victory over the city and keep a case regarding a monument in Pleasant Grove's Pioneer Park out of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Summum, a Salt Lake City-based religious group that follows tenets of Gnostic Christianity and ancient Egyptian teachings, including mummification, filed a brief with the Supreme Court on Thursday, asking the court to reject Pleasant Grove's request for it to weigh in on a 2007 ruling by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That ruling granted a preliminary injunction to Summum, allowing the group to build a monument in Pioneer Park while it awaits the outcome of a federal lawsuit against Pleasant Grove. Brian Barnard, an attorney representing Summum in the case, said that Summum should be allowed to erect a monument to the Seven Aphorisms, a set of principles that are central to the faith. Adherents of Summum believe the Seven Aphorisms are complementary to the Ten Commandments. In the early 1970s, the local chapter of the Fraternal Order of Eagles built a Ten Commandments monument in Pioneer Park, and after Sept. 11, 2001, the city allowed the Boy Scouts of America to build a monument to the firefighters and police officers who responded to the terrorist attacks. Barnard said Summum should be allowed to exercise its First Amendment rights, just as those groups were. "Our basic position is, it's a matter of simple fairness. You let one group put up their monument in the city park, you've got to let everybody do it, and that's what the 10th Circuit said," Barnard said. But Pleasant Grove disagreed with the court's decision and is hoping the Supreme Court will reverse it. The attorney representing Pleasant Grove in the case, Edward White, of the American Center for Law and Justice in Ann Arbor, Mich., submitted a petition to the Supreme Court in November, asking the court to hear the case. "The 10th Circuit decision we view as wrong, and so we've asked the Supreme Court, since [the ruling] has implications not just in Utah but in the other states of the 10th Circuit ... that they should review it," White said. "It's something that the Supreme Court should consider and rule in our favor." The case began in 2004, when Barnard filed a lawsuit on Summum's behalf against Pleasant Grove in U.S. District Court. Barnard felt the law was on Summum's side, but because the case could have dragged on for years, he asked Judge Dee Benson to grant a preliminary injunction allowing the group to erect the monument while the case proceeds. Benson refused Barnard's request for a preliminary injunction, but the 10th Circuit later reversed that decision. If the Supreme Court grants Pleasant Grove's request to hear the case, Benson's original ruling could be reinstated. White said on Thursday that he was reviewing Summum's brief and would submit a response to the Supreme Court. He said numerous states, cities and civic organizations have filed friend-of-the-court briefs supporting Pleasant Grove's petition to the court.
• Jeremy Duda can be reached at 344-2561 or
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