A sheriff’s office in Virginia was ordered to remove a decal displaying  a Bible verse from patrol cars in his department after a government attorney said they violated the separation of church and state.

The small decals cited Matthew 5:9, which says in part, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” They were placed on the back of patrol cars belonging to the Montgomery County sheriff’s office in Southwest Virginia last week. They were removed within two days, however, after the county attorney issued an opinion to the board of supervisors saying the sheriff should remove them.

Chris Tuck, chair of the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors, said he first became aware of the decals when a journalist from the Roanoke Times called asking the board members about it.

Tuck said Wednesday that he had not seen any of the decals on sheriff’s office patrol cars this week and believes they were all removed by Friday.

Of the decals, Tuck said, “I greatly appreciate the sentiment expressed.” But, he said, “it didn’t seem to fit and caused an issue” involving separation of church and state. He said the county attorney was asked to weigh in and gave an opinion that the decals should be removed.

Tuck said he talked to the sheriff last week after the county attorney’s opinion was sent to board members and the sheriff. Tuck said the sheriff told him his “intent was to take them off by Friday.”

“He made the decision on his own,” Tuck said.

A small Minnesota town is about to get the nation’s first public Satanic Temple monument

On Tuesday, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office said Sheriff Hank Partin was out of the office for a medical procedure and not available to comment.

Partin had issued a statement last week explaining that the decals were placed on the vehicles in March after they were donated to the office. He did not disclose who donated the decals. But an article in the Roanoke Times said the sheriff’s office had said that the decals were donated by a company that does graphics for the sheriff’s office.

“Our intent was, and still is, to honor our fellow brothers and sisters in law enforcement,” Partin said in a statement. He said they had planned to leave the decals on the vehicles until the end of last week’s National Police Week.

But “after receiving inquiries and a request from our Board of Supervisors to remove the decals, I made the decision to immediately remove them,” he said.

Partin went on: “In the midst of National Police Week, we want to focus on those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice while serving their communities. The last thing that I want is for this to become a distraction to the men and women who serve their communities selflessly every day.”

The Roanoke Times said the Freedom From Religion Foundation believed that the sheriff’s office must “remain neutral” and can’t “promote one religion over another, or religion over nonreligion.” And the Virginia branch of the American Civil Liberties Union had also weighed in on the decals.

Leslie Mehta, the legal director at the ACLU of Virginia, told the Roanoke Times that the decals being on a sheriff’s vehicle were a concern because “someone being stopped by a sheriff’s deputy may feel one way or the other, that you’re on my side because I’m a Christian or you’re not on my side.

“Either way, that presents a problem under the First Amendment,” she said.

Similar issues of separating church and state have come up in recent years.

In Oklahoma, the state’s Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that a six-foot-tall statue of the Ten Commandments violated the state’s Constitution and had to be removed.

Oklahoma’s Ten Commandments statue must be removed, state Supreme Court says