Art lovers won and the ACLU lost!
A disputed portrait of Jesus Christ will remain at the Slidell city courthouse in Louisiana after a federal judge refused to grant a demand by the American Civil Liberties Union to have the painting removed.
“The court today recognized that the First Amendment allows public officials, and not the ACLU, to determine what is appropriate for acknowledging our nation’s legal and cultural heritage,” said Mike Johnson, senior legal counsel for the Christian legal group Alliance Defense Fund, in a statement Friday.
“The ACLU’s sole and stated objective in this case was to have the Jesus painting removed. But the Constitution does not prohibit public buildings from memorializing great figures from our history.”
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In response, the city of Slidell mounted additional portraits of 15 of history’s preeminent lawgivers alongside the Jesus painting. The framed portraits added on Aug. 31 included those of Confucius, Hammurabi, Moses, Charlemagne, and Sir William Blackstone. Alongside the 16 framed portraits are a reproduction of the U.S. Constitution and a mounted explanation of the various figures in the paintings.
However the added prints did not appease the ACLU, which refused to drop the case.
