A federal appeals court on Friday struck down a Louisiana law that requires public schools to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom.
The 5th U.S. Court of Appeals, often described as one of the most conservative courts in the nation, found the law unconstitutional because it violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment, which bars the government from endorsing a religion or creating laws that favor one religion over another.
The decision upholds a lower court’s injunction that blocked the law from taking effect in five of Louisiana’s K-12 school districts after families with students in those districts sued the state last year. The injunction applies only to the districts where those plaintiffs live.
The legal battle began in June 2024 when Republican Gov. Jeff Landry signed into law a bill requiring every school in Louisiana to display posters with a Protestant version of the Ten Commandments.
The appeals court wrote that “under the statute’s minimum requirements, the [Ten Commandments] posters must be indiscriminately displayed in every public school classroom in Louisiana regardless of class subject-matter,” and thus, if allowed to go up, “those displays will cause an ‘irreparable’ deprivation of [the Plaintiffs’] First Amendment rights.”
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, also a Republican, said she intends to seek a review from the full 5th Circuit and, if necessary, turn to the U.S. Supreme Court.
–Wesley Muller, Stateline
