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.