A coalition of parents attempting to block a state law that would require that the Ten Commandments be displayed in public school classrooms by next year have won a legal battle in federal court.
U.S. District Judge John deGravelles issued an order Tuesday granting the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction, which means the state can’t begin its plan to promote and create rules surrounding the law as soon as Friday while the litigation plays out.
The judge wrote that the law is “facially unconstitutional” and “in all applications,” barring Louisiana from enforcing it and adopting rules around it that require all public K-12 schools and colleges to exhibit posters of the Ten Commandments.
DeGravelles, who heard arguments over the legislation on Oct. 21, also ordered the state attorney general’s office to “provide notice to all schools that the Act has been found unconstitutional.”
The law had dictated that schools have by Jan. 1 to comply. Attorney General Liz Murrill did not immediately respond to the judge’s ruling but is expected to appeal.
Gov. Jeff Landry signed the GOP-backed legislation in June, part of his conservative agenda that has reshaped Louisiana’s cultural landscape, from abortion rights to criminal justice to education.
The move prompted a coalition of parents — Jewish, Christian, Unitarian Universalist and nonreligious — to sue the state in federal court. They argued that the law “substantially interferes with and burdens” their First Amendment right to raise their children with whatever religious doctrine they want.
The American Civil Liberties Union, the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Freedom from Religion Foundation have supported the suit.
In their complaint, the parents 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.”
Steven Green, a professor of law, history and religious studies at Willamette University in Oregon, testified against the law during the federal court hearing, arguing that the Ten Commandments are not at the core of the U.S. government and its founding, and if anything, the Founding Fathers believed in a separation of church and state.
At a news conference after the hearing, Murrill dismissed Green’s testimony as not being relevant as to whether the posters themselves violate the First Amendment.
“This law, I believe, is constitutional, and we’ve illustrated it in numerous ways that the law is constitutional. We’ve shown that in our briefs by creating a number of posters,” Murrill told reporters. “Again, you don’t have to like the posters. The point is you can make posters that comply with the Constitution.”
In August, Murrill and Landry presented examples of how posters of the Ten Commandments could be designed and hung up in classrooms for educational purposes. The displays included historical context for the commandments that the state believes makes its law constitutional.
One poster compared Moses and Martin Luther King Jr., while another riffed off the song “Ten Duel Commandments” from the musical “Hamilton.”
Murrill said no public funds will be required to be spent on printing the posters and they can be supplied through private donations, but questions remain about what happens to educators that refuse to comply with the law.
The state has anticipated that the case could go to the U.S. Supreme Court, which last weighed in on the issue in 1980, when the justices ruled 5-4 that Kentucky’s posting of the Ten Commandments in public schools was unconstitutional.
Another state, Oklahoma, is facing similar lawsuits over a requirement that the Bible be part of lesson plans in public school grades five through 12, and that the Bible be stocked in every classroom.
When asked what he would tell parents concerned about having the Ten Commandments in public schools, Landry said in August: “Tell your child not to look at them.”