After losing its case in federal court, a Utah religious group is now asking a state court judge to allow a monument in a Pleasant Grove city park.
Summum — which was founded in 1975 and is headquartered in a pyramid-shaped temple — encourages some Egyptian practices, such as mummification.
A federal judge on Thursday tossed out a lawsuit by a Salt Lake City religious group seeking equal space for its own marker in a Pleasant Grove city park that has a Ten Commandments monument.
Summum — which was founded in 1975 and is headquartered in a pyramid-shaped temple — encourages some Egyptian practices, such as mummification. It has demanded public space for a monument touting its ‘Seven Aphorisms.’
Summum, a small sect based on Gnostic Christianity, is suing Pleasant Grove, Utah seeking to erect a display of its Seven Aphorisms in a park in Pleasantgrove, Utah.
The town seeks to have the suit thrown out.
The justices today unanimously overturned a ruling that required Pleasant Grove, Utah, to give equal access to Summum, a church that wants to display its “seven aphorisms.”
Writing for the court, Justice Samuel Alito said the Pleasant Grove monument represented “government speech,” exempting it from having to give private groups equal access under the Constitution’s free-speech clause.
Followers of Summum believe that Moses received two sets of tablets on Mount Sinai and that the Ten Commandments were on the second set. The aphorisms were on the first one.
The tiny sect — whose founder says says he learned the aphorisms during a series of telepathic encounters with divine beings he called Summa Individuals — wants them displayed in a public park.
On Wednesday, the US Supreme Court will hear their arguments.
A Utah religion whose followers practice mummification is at the center of a U.S. Supreme Court case that is delaying a permanent home for a World War II monument honoring fallen American servicemen.
Inside a bronze-colored pyramid off Interstate 15 in Salt Lake City, Corky Ra, the founder of the homegrown spiritual group, Summum, is reportedly submerged in a vat of mummification fluids.
The Supreme Court agreed Monday to look at when cities can keep certain religious displays off public grounds, revisiting an enduring free speech issue in a case brought by the unconventional Summum faith.
A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that followers of the Summum faith can display their Seven Aphorisms in Duchesne and Pleasant Grove city parks that already hold monuments of the Ten Commandments.
Followers of the Summum faith say Moses made two trips down from the mountain. On one journey, the prophet returned with the Ten Commandments, “lower laws” that were easily understood and widely distributed. The higher law obtained from the other trip, though, was passed down only to a select few who were able to appreciate it, according to the Salt Lake City-based religion. But now, Summum is fighting a legal battle to share that higher law – the Seven Aphorisms, or principles that underlie creation and nature – with everyone in a public forum. The church has filed suit against