EVERETT — The man who sued Everett for displaying a Ten Commandments monument in front of the downtown police station will not petition to have his case argued before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Everett resident Jesse Card said continuing the legal fight was not the best use of his time and resources nor those of his backer, Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
“After talking to my lawyers about what options were available and what my relative chances were, I decided that further actions would have a poor chance of success,” Card said.
Card first filed a lawsuit in federal court in Seattle against the city in 2003 in an attempt to have the inscribed 6-foot-tall granite tablets removed from public land.
He was joined by several attorneys around the country, as well as Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
In September 2005, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Lasnik ruled that the monument’s presence on city property doesn’t violate the constitutional separation of church and state.
An appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco was launched after the Supreme Court said that two courthouse displays of the Ten Commandments in Kentucky had to be removed, but one on the statehouse grounds in Texas could remain because it is associated with many other monuments.
Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw of the federal appeals court affirmed Lasnik’s 2005 decision in an opinion she wrote for the panel in March.
Card’s petition for a rehearing was recently denied.
The city’s legal tab as of March was close to $200,000.
Card, whose e-mail address lists his name as the Rev. Jesse I. Card, said the city would have been better off donating the monument to Everett’s First Presbyterian Church, up the street from the monument’s current location.
“I hope that the City Council and mayor will come to see that this is a divisive issue and that in the future they will consider donating the monument to a more appropriate venue,” he said.
The monument was a gift to Everett in 1959 by the Fraternal Order of Eagles.
It was given as part of a nationwide drive by the Eagles to “inspire young people and curb juvenile delinquency by providing children with a moral code of conduct to govern their actions,” Lasnik wrote in his decision.
It was originally erected on the corner of Wall Street and Wetmore Avenue, but was moved a few feet in 1988 to make way for a war memorial.
The monument’s current location is obscured from view by shrubs.
Reporter David Chircop: 425-339-3429 or dchircop@heraldnet.com.
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