Colombia's Constitutional Court Says No Bible Quotes To Support Legal Decisions

AP reports that Colombia's Constitutional Court this week released a Directive it issued in June that prohibits courts in the country from using quotations from religious texts to directly support the reasoning for a decision or judgment. However, religious quotations can be used to explain a point of view. The ruling came in a labor court case in which the judge's opinion  included a Biblical quotation: "In the case of justice, it shouldn't even favour the poor." The Constitutional Court said that judges "are obliged to respect the principle of secularism that characterizes the Colombian state,"  and that decisions "must be devoid of any expression suggesting a bias based on religious beliefs or personal convictions of the judicial officer."