Louisiana’s new law requiring classrooms to teach the Ten Commandments is fueling old political conflicts

NEW ORLEANS – A bill signed into law this week makes Louisiana the only state to require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every classroom in public schools and colleges – a move that fuels the long-running debate over the role of religion in government institutions.

Under the new law, all public K-12 classrooms and state-funded universities will be required next year to display the Ten Commandments in poster format in a “large, easy-to-read font.”

Civil liberties groups planned lawsuits to block the law, signed by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, saying it would unconstitutionally violate protections against government-mandated religion. “We are going to see Governor Landry in court,” said Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

State officials emphasize the history of the Ten Commandments, which the bill calls “fundamental documents of our state and national government.”

Similar bills requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in classrooms have been proposed in other statehouses, including Texas, Oklahoma and Utah.

Reasonable and necessary or unconstitutional and harmful? At Archbishop Shaw High School, a Catholic school in suburban New Orleans, the principal, the Rev. Steve Ryan, said he was pleased that the Ten Commandments will be posted on the walls of public schools.

“These laws, which are part of the Judeo-Christian tradition, are good safeguards for society. They are actually reasonable,” Ryan said.

In Baton Rouge, Attorney General Liz Murrill, a Republican ally of Landry, said she looked forward to defending the law.

“The Ten Commandments are quite simple (don’t kill, steal or cheat on your wife), but they are also important to the foundation of our country,” she said on social media.

Opponents of the law argued that eroding the constitutional barrier between religion and government is illegal and unfair.

“We are concerned about families and students in Louisiana public schools,” Laser said. “They come from a variety of different traditions and backgrounds, different religious beliefs, non-religious beliefs, and students in those classrooms are going to feel like outsiders when they see the government endorsing one set of narrow religious beliefs over others.”

Chris Dier, Louisiana’s 2020 Teacher of the Year, echoed these fears and said he has no plans to hang the Ten Commandments in his classroom.

“I don’t believe in anything that is unconstitutional and harmful to students,” he said. It is unclear whether there will be a penalty for refusing to comply with the mandate.

The law was praised by former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, who was removed from office in 2003 after he ignored a federal judge’s order to remove a 2.4-ton granite display of the Ten Commandments from the state courthouse building.

‘Nobody can make you believe in God. The government can’t tell you that, but it must recognize the God upon which this nation was founded,” Moore said.

Members of the Islamic Society of North America and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) expressed concern about the law.

“Is it meant to emphasize universal principles that everyone should embrace? Or is the intention to send a message to Muslim students or others: “Your religion – not welcome here, only one understanding of one religion is welcome here?” said Edward Ahmed Mitchell, National Deputy Director of CAIR.

Mitchell said Muslims respect the Ten Commandments, which are largely reinforced by similar passages in the Quran and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, but that the context is troubling for reasons including the use of a translation of the Ten Commandments associated with evangelicals and other Protestants.

Past Controversies About the Ten Commandments

In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a similar Kentucky law violated the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which says Congress “shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The Supreme Court ruled that the law had no secular purpose, but rather served a clearly religious purpose.

In its most recent rulings on Ten Commandments displays, the Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that such displays in two Kentucky courthouses violated the U.S. Constitution. At the same time, the court upheld a Ten Commandments marker on the grounds of the Texas State Capitol in Austin. Those were 5-4 decisions, but the composition of the court has changed, with now a conservative majority of 6-3.

The key differences in the two cases — at least according to then-Judge Stephen Breyer’s one tie-breaking vote — were that Kentucky county officials had an undeniable track record of religious motives in the posting, while the motives behind the Texas display were more on the “borderline” between religious and secular. Furthermore, Breyer said, the Texas monument had stood the test of time and stood among other monuments for decades without legal challenge.

Other battles between religion and government

After being removed as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court in 2003 over his refusal to remove the Ten Commandments monument, Moore was re-elected to the post, but in 2016 he was suspended from the court after a judicial discipline panel ruled that he urged probate judges to deny marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Moore disputed the accusation.

Louisiana has previously played a prominent role in the legal battle between church and state. In 1987, the Supreme Court struck down a 1981 Louisiana statute that required education about evolution to be accompanied by education about “creation science.” The court found that the statute had no identifiable secular purpose and that the Louisiana Legislature’s “primary purpose was clearly to promote the religious position that humanity was created by a supernatural being.”

Mississippi has mandated the showing of “In God We Trust” in schools since 2001. Louisiana passed a similar mandate that became law last year.

The latest efforts to implement the Ten Commandments follow a major victory for the religious right in 2022: the Supreme Court ruled that a Washington state high school football coach who knelt and prayed on the field after games was constitutionally barred from doing so. protected.

How the Ten Commandments are viewed

Jews and Christians view the Ten Commandments as having been given by God to Moses, according to Biblical accounts, on Mount Sinai. Not every Christian tradition uses the same Ten Commandments. The order varies, as does the wording, depending on which Bible translation is used. The Ten Commandments in the signed Louisiana legislation are listed in an order common to some Protestant and Orthodox traditions.

Disputes over the law are likely to be not just about whether to enforce the commandments on schoolroom walls, but also about which version of them to use, said James Hudnut-Beumler, a professor of American religious history at Vanderbilt University in Nashville , Tenn. Ten Commandments always look universal, until you hang an abbreviated list on the wall and discover there is room for discussion,” he said.

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Cline reported from Baton Rouge, La. Associated Press writers Stephen Smith in New Orleans; Kim Chandler in Montgomery, Alabama; Mark Sherman in Washington, D.C.; Holly Meyer in Nashville, Tenn.; Emily Wagster Pettus in Jackson, Miss.; and Peter Smith in Pittsburgh contributed to this report.

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