Plattsmouth 10 Commandments Case up for 8th Circ rehearing

The Plattsmouth 10 Commandments case still is up for rehearing to the full 8th Circuit Court of Appeals. See World Herald timeline. Comments from both sides of the case indicate strong disagreement whether the Texas display (permissible) or the Kentucky display (not permissible) will sway the 8th Circuit. Justice Thomas suggests that he would overrule all cases holding the Establishment Clause incorporated into the 14th amendment, applicable to the states. Even if the Establishment Clause applies to the States, current Supreme Court rulings provide no consistent guideposts for local governments: "This Court’s precedent elevates the trivial to the proverbial “federal case,” by making benign signs and postings subject to challenge. Yet even as it does so, the Court’s precedent attempts to avoid declaring all religious symbols and words of longstanding tradition unconstitutional, by counterfactually declaring them of little religious significance. Even when the Court’s cases recognize that such symbols have religious meaning, they adopt an unhappy compromise that fails fully to account for either the adherent’s or the nonadherent’s beliefs, and provides no principled way to choose between them. Even worse, the incoherence of the Court’s decisions in this area renders the Establishment Clause impenetrable and incapable of consistent application. All told, this Court’s jurisprudence leaves courts, governments, and believers and nonbelievers alike confused–an observation that is hardly new."