Gov. Jeff Landry signed legislation Wednesday requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed on every public order in Louisiana, making the state the only one with such a mandate and reigniting the debate over how porous the lines between church and state should be.
Critics, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Freedom From Religion Foundation, have vowed a legal battle against the law, which they say is “blatantly unconstitutional.” But it’s a battle supporters are prepared, and in many ways, willing, to take on.
“I can’t wait to be sued,” Mr. Landry said Saturday at a Republican fund-raiser in Nashville, according to The Tennessean. And on Wednesday, as he signed the measure, he argued that the Ten Commandments contained valuable lessons for students.
“If you want to respect the rule of law,” he said, “you have to start with the original lawgiver, which was Moses.”
The legislation is part of a broader campaign by conservative Christian groups to bolster public expressions of faith and bring lawsuits that could reach the Supreme Court, where they expect a friendlier reception than in the past. This presumption has its roots in recent decisions, particularly a 2022 decision in which the court sided with a high school football coach who argued he had a constitutional right to pray at the 50-yard line after his team’s games.
“The climate is definitely better,” said Charles C. Haynes, a senior fellow at the Freedom Forum and a scholar specializing in religious freedom and political discourse, referring to the view of those supporting the legislation.
But Mr. Haynes said he found the excitement behind the Louisiana law and other efforts unwarranted. “I think they’re overreaching,” he said, adding that “even this court will have a hard time justifying” what lawmakers have envisioned.
The Louisiana measure requires the orders to be displayed in every classroom at every public elementary, middle and high school, as well as in classrooms at public colleges. Posters must be no smaller than 11 by 14 inches and commands must be “the central focus of the poster” and “in large, legible font.”
It will also include a three-paragraph statement asserting that the Ten Commandments have been “a prominent part of American public education for nearly three centuries.”
This reflects proponents’ claim that the Ten Commandments are not a purely religious text, but also a historical document, arguing that the instructions God gave to Moses in the Book of Exodus are highly influential in United States law.
“The Ten Commandments are there, time and time again, as the basis and foundation for the system that America was built on,” said Matt Krause, an attorney with the First Liberty Institute, a nonprofit legal organization that defends religious expression.
But as lawmakers debated the measure, supporters argued that such a visible display was more about sharing legal history.
“Given all the garbage our children are exposed to in classrooms today, it is imperative that we restore the Ten Commandments to prominence,” said State Representative Dodie Horton, the Republican sponsor of the legislation.
The measure allows our children to “look up and see what God says is right and what God says is wrong,” Ms. Horton told her colleagues. “It doesn’t preach a particular religion, but it certainly shows what the moral code is that we should all live by.”
Critics said the legislation was a clear constitutional violation. In a joint statement, groups including the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Southern Poverty Law Center argued that the law “violates the fundamental right of students and families to religious freedom.”
“Our public schools are not Sunday schools,” the statement said, “and students of all faiths, or no faith, should feel welcome in them.”
The law is the product of a legislative period in which Republican lawmakers who felt stifled for eight years under the Democratic governor, John Bel Edwards, tried to push a raft of conservative legislation to Mr. Landry, his Republican successor.
In a special session this year, lawmakers reversed an earlier overhaul of the criminal justice system and passed bills to extend sentences for some crimes, severely limit access to parole, prosecute 17-year-olds accused of any crime as adults and allow methods of execution beyond lethal injection.
Lawmakers also pushed first-generation measures, such as designating abortion pills as dangerous controlled substances and allowing judges to order the surgical castration of sex offenders.
Louisiana is the first state to require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in schools since the Supreme Court struck down a Kentucky law in 1980 that had a similar directive. In that case, Stone v. Graham, the court found that the law violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
But the Supreme Court has become more likely to rule in favor of religious rights under Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.
Perhaps the strongest message, conservative lawyers and activists said, was the 2022 decision that found Joseph Kennedy, an assistant football coach at a public high school near Seattle, was protected by the First Amendment when he offered prayers after games, often attended by students. .
With that decision, the majority rejected a longstanding precedent known as the Lemon test, which has been applied to cases involving the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The clause is intended to “prevent the government from either promoting (ie establishing) or hindering religion, favoring one religion over others, or favoring religion over non-religion,” Mr. Haynes wrote.
The test required courts to consider whether the challenged government practice had a secular purpose, whether its primary effect was to promote or inhibit religion, and whether it encouraged excessive government involvement with religion.
The decision was ”somewhat of a watershed,” Mr. Krause said, adding, ”I think any decision based solely on the Lemon test is open to new scrutiny, whether it’s graduation prayers or Nativity scenes on public land or the ten orders.”
Louisiana law—and the litigation it virtually guarantees—provides an opportunity to apply this scrutiny to public appearances of the Ten Commandments.
Legislative efforts in other states have had a bumpy road. Similar proposals have recently failed in Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas. One introduced in Utah this year was downgraded to a measure that would have added the Ten Commandments to a list of documents and principles that could be included in school curricula.
Mr Haynes of the Freedom Forum said he believed the courts – including the Supreme Court, if the cases went that far – would look at the statements in historical context and recognize that the motivation was to introduce religious instruction into public classrooms .
If the courts did not agree, he said, the result would amount to a catastrophic erosion of the differences between government and religion.
“That would change who we are as a country, to go in that direction and not have barriers to government involvement with religion,” Mr. Haynes said. “What would be left? What couldn’t the government do?’
Michael Levenson and Sarah Mervos contributed to the report.
