NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Lawyers for the state of Louisiana asked a federal appeals court Wednesday to immediately block a judge’s decision ordering education officials to tell all local districts that a law requiring schools to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms is unconstitutional is.
U.S. District Judge John deGravelles in Baton Rouge declared the law “prima facie unconstitutional” in a lengthy ruling Tuesday and ordered education officials to inform the state’s 72 local school boards of that fact.
The state plans to appeal deGravelle’s entire order, but the emergency appeal to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals targets only one aspect of it. Prosecutors say the judge exceeded his authority when he ordered all local school boards to be notified of his finding because only five districts were named as defendants in a legal challenge to the law.
These counties are in East Baton Rouge, Livingston, St. Tammany, Orleans and Vernon parishes.
Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley and the state Board of Education are also defendants in the lawsuit and were ordered by deGravelles not to take steps to implement the law.
However, the state maintains that the order only applies to the five boards because officials have no oversight authority over local, elected school boards.
The law was passed by the Republican-dominated Legislature this year and signed by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry in June.
In Tuesday’s decision, deGravelles said the law had an “apparently religious” purpose and rejected state officials’ claims that the government could order the establishment of the Ten Commandments because they are historically crucial to the foundation of U.S. law.
His statement noted that no other fundamental documents such as the Constitution or the Bill of Rights need to be published.
Attorney General Elizabeth Murrill, a GOP ally of Landry, said Tuesday that the state disagreed with deGravelles’ finding.
