Parents and civil rights groups are suing Louisiana to block the ‘disruptive’ Ten Commandments law

A group of Louisiana families with children in public schools are suing the state in federal court to block a new state law that would require every classroom in public schools to display the Ten Commandments.

The plaintiffs include parents from multifaith backgrounds — including rabbis and pastors — represented by a coalition of civil rights groups, who argue that the law violates long-standing Supreme Court precedent and the First Amendment’s protection of government injections of religion in schools.

“Permanently posting the Ten Commandments in every Louisiana public school classroom – making them unavoidable – unconstitutionally pressures students into religious observance, veneration and adoption of the state’s favorite religious scriptures,” the lawsuit said, which was filed in federal court in Baton. Rouge on Monday.

Republican Gov. Jeff Landry signed the legislation from a Catholic school last week after announcing he “can’t wait to be sued” by making Louisiana the first state to mandate the Ten Commandments in schools.

Landry’s law appears designed to spark a federal court battle that will work its way to the Supreme Court. Conservative Christian legal groups have been seeking another opportunity for decades to overturn Supreme Court rulings that protect the separation of church and state.

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit — which targets state school officials — have argued that the law not only violates First Amendment protections, but also “sends the harmful and religiously divisive message that students who do not subscribe to the Ten Commandments – or To be more precise, the specific version of the Ten Commandments (the law) requires that schools demonstrate that they do not belong in their own school community and must refrain from expressing faith practices or beliefs that are not in line with religious state preferences.”

The plaintiffs include a Unitarian Universalist minister, her husband and their two children; a Presbyterian minister and his three children; a Jewish father and his two primary school-age children; and other Unitarian and non-religious families.

“This law is a disturbing abuse of power by state officials,” said Heather L Weaver, chief counsel for the ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief. “Louisiana law requires children to go to school so they can be educated and not evangelized.”

Louisiana law requires all schools to display the text exactly as written in the bill, and in “a poster or framed document measuring at least 13 by 14 inches” – and “in a large, easily readable font.”

It also requires a 200-word “context statement” arguing that the Ten Commandments “were a prominent part of American public education for nearly three centuries until 50 years ago.”

This is a development story