Courtroom poster ruled unconstitutional

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Feb. 3 (UPI) -- A U.S. appeals court has upheld a lower court ruling that an Ohio judge's display of the Ten Commandments in his courtroom was unconstitutional.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that when Richland County Common Pleas Judge James DeWeese put up a poster in his Mansfield courtroom he violated the First Amendment, the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch reported Thursday.

The appeals court's ruling upheld a 2009 district court judge's decision that the poster endorsed particular religious views over others.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which joined in the constitutional challenge to the poster by the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, hailed the appeals court's ruling.

"Judge DeWeese was improperly promoting his personal religious beliefs in his courtroom, and I'm glad the appeals court put a stop to it," the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, the group's executive director, said in a statement.

DeWeese put the poster up in 2006, after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2005 that his previous Ten Commandments poster, hung in 2000, was also unconstitutional, the Dispatch reported.