A U.S. District Court judge in Seattle has ordered that a monument of the Ten Commandments outside the Everett police station and City Council chambers can remain there and that it doesn't violate the First Amendment.

In a summary judgment for the City of Everett, Judge Robert Lasnik said the Everett case was "remarkably similar" to a Texas case against a Ten Commandments monument outside the state capitol.

The Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that the display in Texas was constitutional. But at the same time the high court ruled that the display of framed copies of the commandments on the walls of two Kentucky courthouses was not constitutional.

The difference between the cases, and what makes the Everett case constitutional, is context, Lasnik wrote in his decision.

"The message that a display conveys must be evaluated in light of its historic, temporal, and physical setting," the order read.

Lasnik then said in his order that the Everett monument had been outside the city hall since 1959, was accepted by the city for a number of secular reasons and was not intended to advance religion, among other thing.

Lasnik stayed his rulings last October, pending the Supreme Court decision. The case was brought against the city by Jesse Card, an Everett resident who argued that the monument violated constitutional requirements for the separation of church and state.