The entire 10th Circuit Court of Appeals will not revisit a 3-judge panel's ruling that a Ten Commandments display at the Haskell County, Oklahoma courthouse is unconstitutional. A 6-6 tie vote for re-hearing leaves in place the earlier decision.
A pair of opinions dissenting from the decision not to re-hear are here (pdf).
Judge Paul Kelly complains that the panel improperly distinguished this case from the monuments the Supreme Court allowed in Van Orden:
The court’s decision in this case perpetuates a regrettable misapprehension of the Establishment Clause: that recognition of the role of religion in this country’s founding, history, traditions, and laws is to be strictly excluded from the civic sphere. The court’s analysis misconstrues—and in so doing multiplies the errors inherent in—the Supreme Court’s already-questionable “tests” used to analyze passive acknowledgments of religion such as Ten Commandments monuments. The opinion strongly suggests that Ten Commandments displays authorized by small-town commissioners who harbor personal religious beliefs are unconstitutional establishments of religion. Such a conclusion is not only inconsistent with the original meaning of the Establishment Clause, but is also plainly contrary to the Supreme Court’s precedent in Van Orden v. Perry.
NewsOK has more.
