Gov. Jeff Landry signed a bill Wednesday requiring the Ten Commandments to be posted in all Louisiana public classrooms, making the state the only one to impose such a requirement and reigniting a debate about how blurred the line between church and state should be.
Critics, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Freedom From Religion Foundation, have vowed a legal fight against the law, which they consider “clearly unconstitutional.” But it's a fight that advocates are ready and, in many ways, eager to take on.
“I can't wait to get sued,” Landry said at a Republican fundraiser in Nashville on Saturday, according to The Tennessean. Then, as he signed the bill on Wednesday, he argued that the Ten Commandments contain valuable lessons for students.
“If we want to respect the rule of law, we have to start with Moses, the original lawgiver,” he said.
The bill is part of a broader movement by conservative Christian groups to promote public expression of their faith and provoke a lawsuit that could reach the Supreme Court, where the groups hope to find a friendlier response than in years past. The presumption is rooted in recent decisions, particularly a 2022 decision in which the Supreme 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 mood is definitely improving,” said Charles C. Haynes, a senior fellow at the Freedom Forum and an expert on religious freedom and civil discourse, referring to the views of those supporting the bill.
Still, Haynes said the enthusiasm for Louisiana's law and other efforts is unwarranted. “I think they've gone too far,” he said, adding, “Even this court would have a hard time justifying what lawmakers had in mind.”
The Louisiana bill would require the commandments to be displayed in every classroom in public elementary, middle and high schools, as well as in classrooms at public universities. The posters must be at least 11 by 14 inches in size, and the commandments must be displayed “in the center of the poster” and in “large, easily readable font.”
It also includes a three-paragraph statement asserting that the Ten Commandments have “been a vital part of American public education for nearly three centuries.”
This reflects the argument of its supporters that the Ten Commandments are not purely religious documents but also historical, and that the teachings God conveyed to Moses in the Book of Exodus have a major influence on U.S. law.
“The Ten Commandments come up again and again as the foundation and cornerstone of the system on which America was built,” said Matt Kraus, an attorney at the First Liberty Institute, a nonprofit legal group that defends religious expression.
Still, as lawmakers debated the bill, supporters argued that such a visible display would do more than just share legal history.
“Given the nonsense kids are exposed to in classrooms today, it's urgent that we put the Ten Commandments back in a prominent position,” said state Rep. Dodie Horton, the bill's Republican sponsor.
The measure “allows kids to discern what God says is right and what is wrong,” Houghton told her colleagues. “It doesn't preach any particular religion, but it does make it clear what the moral code is that we should all live by.”
Critics said the law clearly violates the Constitution. Groups including the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, Americans for Separation of Church and State and the Southern Poverty Law Center said in a joint statement that the law “violates the fundamental right of religious freedom for students and their families.”
“Our public schools are not Sunday schools,” the statement said, adding that “students of all faiths, or no faith, should be welcome in our public schools.”
The legislation is the product of a legislative season in which Republican lawmakers, who had been repressed for eight years under Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards, sought to present a slate of conservative bills to his Republican successor, Gov. Landry.
During a special session this year, lawmakers passed bills that reversed previous reforms to the criminal justice system, lengthening sentences for some crimes, severely restricting parole, allowing 17-year-olds charged with any crime to be prosecuted as adults, and allowing methods of execution other than lethal injection.
Lawmakers also advanced first-in-the-nation measures, such as designating the abortion pill as a dangerous controlled substance and allowing judges to order the castration of child 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 with a similar mandate in 1980. In that case, Stone v. Graham, the Court found that the law violated the First Amendment's separation of church and state clause.
But under Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., the Supreme Court has become more likely to rule in favor of religious rights.
Perhaps the strongest signal, conservative lawyers and activists say, was a 2022 ruling that found that a post-game prayer led by Joseph Kennedy, an assistant football coach at a public high school near Seattle, and joined by students, was protected by the First Amendment.
In this decision, the majority overturned a long-standing precedent known as the Lemon test, which applied to cases involving the First Amendment's separation of church and state clause. Haynes wrote that the clause is intended to “prevent the government from promoting (i.e., separating church and state) or impeding religion, favoring one religion over another, or favoring religion over non-religion.”
This test required courts to consider whether the challenged government practice has a secular purpose, whether its primary effect is to promote or suppress religion, and whether it encourages undue government interaction with religion.
Krauss called the ruling “kind of a turning point,” adding, “I think decisions based solely on the Lemon test, whether it's about graduation prayers, nativity scenes on public land or the Ten Commandments, could be subject to new scrutiny.”
Louisiana's law, and the litigation it essentially guarantees, provides an opportunity to apply that scrutiny to any public display of the Ten Commandments.
Legislative efforts in other states have had an uphill road: Similar proposals were recently defeated in Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas. A bill introduced in Utah this year was watered down to adding the Ten Commandments to a list of documents and principles that can be included in school curricula.
Haynes, of the Freedom Forum, said he believes courts — including the Supreme Court if the case makes it to the Supreme Court — will see through the historical context statement and realize that the motivation was to bring religious education into public schools.
He said if the court did not agree, the outcome would be a devastating breakdown in the government-religion divide.
“If we go in that direction and there are no barriers to government interaction with religion, it would change who we are as a country,” Haines said. “What would be left? What can't government do?”
Michael Levenson and Sarah Marvosh Contributed report.