Federal judge delays placement of Ten Commandments in Louisiana public schools

A federal judge has banned Louisiana from displaying the Ten Commandments in public schools until November. Parents from five counties had sued the state over the law that requires public schools to display posters with the commandments.

In a brief ruling Friday, U.S. District Judge John deGravelles said the parents and the state agreed that the Ten Commandments would not be posted in a public school classroom before Nov. 15. The state also agreed “not to promulgate any advisory opinion, rule or regulation regarding the proper implementation of the challenged statutes.”

The state’s Republican governor, Jeff Landry, signed a bill last month that requires all public school and college classrooms to have posters with the Ten Commandments in “large, easy-to-read font.” The state also requires a four-paragraph “context statement” about how the commandments “have been a prominent part of American public education for nearly three centuries.”

Shortly after the bill was signed, a coalition of parents, backed by the American Civil Liberties Union and other civil rights groups, filed a lawsuit against the state, claiming the bill violated the First Amendment.

The bill “unconstitutionally pressures students to practice, worship and adopt the state’s preferred religious scriptures,” the lawsuit says.

The state gave schools a Jan. 1 deadline to put up the posters and said the lawsuit had no impact on that deadline.

In a statement, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said the state had agreed to hold the posters until Nov. 15 “because certain legal steps take time … in addition to creating the posters.”

“The January 2025 compliance date has not changed,” Murrill said.

The bill would give the Supreme Court a chance to overturn its 1980 ruling that a similar law in Kentucky violated the provisions of the First Amendment.

In an interview at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, earlier this week, Landry said, “This is one of those cases where the court got it wrong.

“So here’s the question: If the Supreme Court did something wrong, why wouldn’t you want it corrected? What’s the price you would pay to have it corrected?”

Landry noted that he believes the Ten Commandments will improve the moral behavior of students, citing Thomas Crooks, the 20-year-old who shot Trump last week.

“I would argue,” he said, “that if the Ten Commandments had been on the wall of the school he attended, he might not have shot the assassin of the (former) president.”