Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry signed the law on June 19.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other groups are planning to sue Louisiana over a new law that requires public schools to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms.
Louisiana House Bill 71, which became law on June 19, mandates that school districts must “display the Ten Commandments in each classroom in each school under its jurisdiction,” by Jan. 1, 2025.
The law “violates the separation of church and state and is blatantly unconstitutional,” the ACLU, the Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom from Religion Foundation said in a joint statement.
The organizations pointed out that no other states require public schools to display the Ten Commandments, which is a list of directives from the Bible. They also highlighted a 1980 U.S. Supreme Court decision that found a Kentucky law requiring the commandments in every public school classroom “has no secular legislative purpose, and therefore is unconstitutional as violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.”
In that case, Stone v. Graham, the 5-4 majority said that the Bible could be used in certain classes like history but that posting religious texts on walls “serves no such educational function.”
Louisiana legislators cite another 5-4 Supreme Court decision in the law. Issued in 2005 in the case of Van Orden v. Perry, the Supreme Court found that the Establishment Clause allowed the display of a Ten Commandments monument on the grounds of the Texas State Capitol.
“The placement of the Ten Commandments monument on the Texas State Capitol grounds is a far more passive use of those texts than was the case in Stone, where the text confronted elementary school students every day,” the majority said in that ruling. It added later that the display in Texas “has a dual significance, partaking of both religion and government.”
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