Even so, a lawyer for the ACLU of Massachusetts took more pointed questions from justices than her counterpart from Becket law group, especially over her contention that putting statues of St. Michael the Archangel and St. Florian on a government building would impermissibly elevate Catholicism.
At issue is whether installing the statues would violate Article 3 of the Massachusetts Constitution, which (as amended in 1833) guarantees equal protection of “all religious sects and denominations” and also prohibits subordinating one to another. But the dispute also has the potential to reach the U.S. Supreme Court on First Amendment grounds.
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