Ten Commandments WON’T GO in La. Classrooms
According to an agreement authorized by a federal judge on Friday, Louisiana will not take official action to execute a statute requiring the Ten Commandments to be posted in all of the state’s public school classrooms until at least November as the lawsuit works its way through the courts.
Parents of children attending public schools in Louisiana who come from a variety of religious backgrounds filed the lawsuit in June, claiming that the law violates the First Amendment’s prohibition on the establishment of religion by the government and its guarantee of religious liberty. Because the Ten Commandments are historical and form the basis of American law, proponents of the law contend that they should be taught in schools.
The deal on Friday does not change the law’s requirement that the commandments be posted by January 1st at the latest. The settlement guarantees that the state education officials and other local school boards, who are the defendants in the complaint, would not put up the commandments in classrooms prior to November 15. They also won’t create regulations controlling how the law is applied before then.
In order to give time for briefs, arguments, and a decision, the defendants “agreed to not take public-facing compliance measures until November 15,” according to Lester Duhe, a spokesperson for Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill.
A similar Kentucky statute was declared unconstitutional in 1980 by the U.S. Supreme Court, citing the U.S. Constitution’s establishment clause, which states that Congress may “make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The Supreme Court determined that the law served a blatantly religious objective rather than any secular one.
The Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that these kinds of exhibits in two Kentucky courthouses were unconstitutional. Concurrently, the court maintained the Ten Commandments monument situated on the premises of the Texas State Capitol located in Austin.