BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana will not take any official steps toward implementing a law requiring the Ten Commandments to be posted in all of the state’s public schools until at least November while a lawsuit challenging the law continues, according to an agreement approved Friday by a federal judge.
The lawsuit was filed in June by parents of students of mixed religious backgrounds in Louisiana public schools. They said the law violates the First Amendment, which prohibits government imposition of religion and guarantees religious freedom. Supporters of the law argue that the Ten Commandments belong in the classroom because they are historic and part of the foundation of U.S. law.
Louisiana law requires the commandments to be posted no later than Jan. 1, a deadline that remains untouched by Friday’s agreement. The agreement ensures that the defendants in the lawsuit – state education officials and several local school boards – will not post the commandments in classrooms before Nov. 15 and will not issue any rules implementing the law until then.
Lester Duhe, a spokesman for Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, said the defendants “agreed not to take any publicly visible compliance action until November 15” to allow time for briefs, arguments and a decision.
In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a similar law in Kentucky violated the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which states that Congress “shall make no law establishing a State religion.” The Supreme Court found that the law had a distinctly religious purpose, not a secular one.
In 2005, the Supreme Court ruled that such displays in two Kentucky courthouses were unconstitutional, while also upholding the display of a sign with the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the Texas Capitol in Austin.
Louisiana’s fresh law does not require schools to spend public money on Ten Commandments posters. It allows schools to accept donated posters or money to pay for the posters.
The law also specifically allows, but does not require, other displays in public schools. These include: the Mayflower Treaty, signed by religious pilgrims aboard the Mayflower in 1620 and often referred to as America’s “first constitution,” the Declaration of Independence, and the Northwest Ordinance, which established a government in the Northwest Territory — now the Midwest — and paved a way for fresh states to be admitted to the Union.
The legal challenge to the law came shortly after it was signed into law by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, who succeeded Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards in January. Landry’s inauguration marked a complete Republican takeover of government in a Bible Belt state where the party already held all other statewide elected offices and had a two-thirds majority in the legislature.
