Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry addresses reporters after a U.S. Supreme Court First Amendment case in March, 2024. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty)
(JTA) — A federal judge temporarily blocked a new law in Louisiana that would have required public schools to display the Ten Commandments by Jan. 1, 2025.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge John W. deGravelles in Baton Rouge follows a lawsuit brought by a coalition of parents, including three Jewish families, arguing that the law violated the First Amendment.
deGravelles found that the law is “unconstitutional on its face.” His preliminary injunction means the state cannot implement the new legislation until the litigation concludes. The judge also ordered the state’s attorney general to “provide notice to all schools that the Act has been found unconstitutional.”
The law, signed by Louisiana Republican Gov. Jeff Landry in June, would require every public K-12 school and state-funded university classroom to display posters that are at least 11 inches by 14 inches with the text of the Ten Commandments and accompanied by a four-paragraph “context statement” explaining how the Ten Commandments “were a prominent part of American public education for almost three centuries.”
The complaint — filed on the families’ behalf by Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Freedom from Religion Foundation — said the law specifically violated the Constitution’s prohibition against the establishment of an official religion, and constituted an infringement on the free exercise of religion.
The suit, for which deGravelles heard arguments on Oct. 21, said the law “sends the harmful and religiously divisive message that students who do not subscribe to the Ten Commandments … do not belong in their own school community and should refrain from expressing any faith practices or beliefs that are not aligned with the state’s religious preferences.”
The lawsuit also took issue with the specific wording of the Ten Commandments that would be used, arguing that the text of the Ten Commandments mandated by the law is a Christian version and “does not match any version or translation found in the Jewish tradition.”
The version in the bill leaves out sections of the commandments’ text, including part of the first commandment in Judaism, which speaks of God bringing the Israelites out of Egypt.
While proponents of the law have argued that families who object to the posters could simply “Tell your child not to look at them,” as Landry said in August, deGravelles in his ruling flatly rejected that argument.
“In short, the Act is coercive to students, and, for all practical purposes, they cannot opt out of viewing the Ten Commandments when they are displayed in every classroom, every day of the year, every year of their education,” deGravelles wrote.
While similar laws have been proposed in Texas, Oklahoma and Utah, Louisiana was the first to enshrine its version into law. Some view the law as a test case for the future of church-state separations in the U.S.: While he U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1980 that a Kentucky state law requiring the Ten Commandments to be shown in all classrooms was unconstitutional, the Conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court appears sympathetic to those seeking to elevate the role of religion in public life.
“We strongly disagree with the court’s decision and will immediately appeal,” Louisiana Attorney General Elizabeth Murrill told the Associated Press.
The Louisiana law, and similar Ten Commandments requirements being proposed in other Republican-led states, are just one example of a slate of efforts to incorporate religion into public schools. In Florida, a bill signed this year would allow school districts to have volunteer chaplains counsel students. Oklahoma’s top education official ordered public schools to include Bible lessons for fifth through twelfth graders.
And President-elect Donald Trump, who had endorsed the Louisiana law in June, included a promise to “fiercely protect the First Amendment right to pray in public schools” in his campaign’s list of “ten principles for achieving great schools.” This year’s Republican platform also promises to “support a new Federal Task Force on Fighting Anti-Christian Bias.”
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