BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana will not take any formal steps to enforce a law requiring the Ten Commandments to be placed in all public school classrooms in the state until at least November, when a lawsuit will make its way through the courts, according to an agreement approved Friday by a federal judge.
The lawsuit was filed in June. Parents of children of various religious backgrounds who attend Louisiana public schools argue that the law prohibits the government from establishing religion and violates the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom. Supporters of the law argue that the Ten Commandments are historic and part of the foundation of U.S. law and therefore should be taught in classrooms.
Louisiana law requires the discipline to be posted by Jan. 1, but that deadline is not affected by Friday’s agreement, which ensures that the state education agency and several local school boards — defendants in the lawsuit — will not require the discipline to be posted in classrooms until Nov. 15 and will not enact rules governing the law’s implementation before then.
Lester Dew, a spokesman for Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, said the defendants “have agreed not to take any publicly announced compliance measures until Nov. 15 to allow time for briefs, arguments and judgment.”
In 1980, The US Supreme Court ruled A similar Kentucky law was argued to violate the Church and State Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which states that Congress “shall make no law respecting the establishment of any religion.” The Supreme Court found that the law served no secular purpose, but rather a clearly religious one.
In 2005, the Supreme Court ruled that such displays in two Kentucky courthouses were unconstitutional. At the same time, the Court upheld a Ten Commandments sign on the grounds of the Texas State Capitol in Austin.
Louisiana’s new law does not require school systems to spend public money on Ten Commandments posters, but allows them to accept donations for the posters or payment for the cost of hanging them.
The act also specifically authorizes, but does not require, other postings in public schools, including the Mayflower Compact, 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 for the Northwest Territory (now the Midwest) and paved the way for the admission of new states into the Union.
The legal challenge to the law came shortly after it was signed by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, who succeeded two-term Democrat John Bel Edwards in January. Landry’s inauguration marked complete Republican control of state government in the Bible Belt state, where Republicans already controlled every other elected office in the state and held a majority in the Legislature.
