Proposed constitutional amendments that ask voters to return a Ten Commandments monument to the Oklahoma Capitol grounds have been approved by separate House and Senate committees.
The Republican-backed measures were approved Wednesday by rules committees of the Oklahoma House and Senate and sent to the full chambers for a vote.
The resolutions—House Joint Resolution 1062 and Senate Joint Resolution 72—call for a statewide referendum on whether to abolish an article of the Oklahoma Constitution that prohibits the use of state funds to support a religion. The state Supreme Court relied on that constitutional requirement in June when it ordered a Ten Commandments monument removed from the Capitol grounds.
The six-foot-tall granite monument was authorized by the Republican-controlled Legislature in 2009 and was erected in 2012.
