SCOTUS Blog reports (Lyle Denniston) that the Justices denied certiorari on a new Ten Commandments case as well as a RLUIPA case but did nothing yet with respect to the fairly well-known Utah highway cross case out of the 10th Circuit.  Here’s the relevant bit.  (And see my colleague Mark’s post below on the Court’s Ten Commandments display doctrine.)   — MOD

Among the hundreds of cases denied review was one involving a plea for the Court to reopen the question of the constitutionality of posting the Ten Commandments on the wall of a courtroom — an issue brought to it by a state judge in Ohio (DeWeese v. ACLU, 10-1512).  The Court, however, took no immediate action on the constitutionality of placing a Christian cross at the roadside sites of the deaths of on duty of state highway patrolmen (Utah Highway Patrol Association v. American Atheists, 10-1276, and Davenport v. American Atheists, 10-1297).  In another case involving church-state issues, the Court declined to sort out how far local governments must go, under the federal Religious Land Use [and Institutionalized Persons] Act, to allow churches to build new structures in areas of the city not zoned for such uses (San Leandro v. International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, 11-106).