FILE – Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry talks to reporters outside the Supreme Court, Jan. 7, 2022, in Washington (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File). Inset: A copy of the Ten Commandments hangs in the Alabama Capitol in Montgomery, Ala., Thursday, June 20, 2024 (AP Photo/Kim Chandler).
A controversial new law in Louisiana requiring schools to have a poster of the Ten Commandments in every classroom will not be in effect when students return next month, giving a federal judge time to weigh the constitutionality of the measure.
U.S. District Court Judge for the Middle District of Louisiana John deGravelles on Friday approved an agreement reached between the plaintiff parents and civil rights organizations challenging the constitutionality of the law and the defendants, Louisiana State Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley and the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, documents reviewed by Law&Crime show.
While the law didn’t make posting the biblical writing mandatory until Jan. 1, 2025, under the terms of the agreement, “no Defendant will post the Ten Commandments in any public-school classroom before November 15, 2024.”
Additionally, the defendants agreed that prior to Nov. 15, they will not “promulgate advice, rules, or regulations” regarding proper implementation of the law.
The agreement came after deGravelles, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, ordered a status conference asking the parties to agree on a date for the law to take effect. The judge suggested the Nov. 15 date as it would allow the court to hold a Sept. 30 hearing on the matter.
A spokesperson for the Louisiana Attorney General’s Office, the agency representing the government in the lawsuit, emphasized in a statement to the Louisiana Illuminator that the agreement between the parties should not be seen as a victory for the plaintiffs.
“The law is not ‘paused,’ ‘blocked’ or ‘halted,’” the statement reportedly said. “At the district court’s requests, the named defendants … agreed not to take public-facing compliance measures until November 15 to allow sufficient time for briefing, oral argument, and a decision.”
Louisiana last month became the first state to require the Commandments to be displayed in every public school and university classroom. The law requires that by Jan. 1, 2025, every public school classroom in the state must display the Ten Commandments “on a poster or framed document that is at least eleven inches by fourteen inches,” in “a large, easily readable font.”
When Louisiana’s Republican governor, Jeff Landry, signed the law, he said it was a way of respecting Moses as “the original law giver.” When Landry was questioned about the legality of the requirement, he bragged, “I can’t wait to be sued.” Landry’s wish was fulfilled just days later when a multifaith group of nine families filed the federal lawsuit claiming that law violates the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.
Landry this week spoke at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he suggested that the law may have stopped Thomas Matthew Crooks from attempting to assassinate former President Donald Trump.
“I would submit that maybe if the Ten Commandments were hanging on [Crooks’] wall at the school that he was in, maybe he wouldn’t have took a shot at the president,” Landry said on Thursday.
The plaintiff families, represented by the ACLU and multiple advocacy organizations, previously filed a motion for preliminary injunction seeking an emergency order blocking the law so that children returning to school this year are not subjected to “unavoidable, permanently displayed religious directives.”
In their filing, the plaintiffs noted that Landry posted about the law on his official social media pages, asking, “Since when did the Ten Commandments become a bad way to live your life?!” and sent out a fundraising email asking his supporters to help him defend the lawsuit and “ADVANCE [] the Judeo-Christian values that this nation was built upon.”
The plaintiffs say that the law pushes a denomination of Christianity that applies to only one segment of Louisiana residents — one which “is principally associated with Protestant beliefs and denominations.” The Scripture required by the state “differ[s] in meaningful ways from those used by other denominations and faiths that recognize the Ten Commandments as part of their theology, including Catholicism and Judaism.”
“The Act requires this Protestant version of the Ten Commandments to be displayed,” the filing adds, after noting that for many religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and “other non-western faiths,” the Ten Commandments “have no place at all.”
The plaintiffs also argue that they are likely to win their lawsuit on its merits, because the Supreme Court has already clearly ruled that mandated Ten Commandments postings are unconstitutional. They also argued that maintaining the status quo while the legal challenges proceed is unlikely to cause harm.
The U.S. Supreme Court in 1980 struck down a Kentucky statute that required posters of the Ten Commandments to be displayed in classrooms as a violation of the Establishment Clause. No ruling has ever overturned that precedent, and several later cases have reinforced its holding.
However, the Louisiana law is being challenged at a time when the conservative majority on the high court has been extraordinarily supportive of an expanded view of “religious liberty.” The conservative justices have also not hesitated to overturn precedent from milestone cases, such as Roe v. Wade.
Elura Nanos contributed to this report.
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