A federal appeals court has temporarily allowed most Louisiana school districts to implement a law requiring Ten Commandments displays in classrooms.
By Tom Ozimek
A federal appeals court in New Orleans has temporarily narrowed the scope of a ruling that struck down a Louisiana law requiring public schools to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms, allowing the law to be implemented in the vast majority of the state’s school districts.
The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued an administrative stay on Nov. 15, temporarily halting a provision requiring state education officials to inform all 72 school districts that the law was invalidated. This means that the legal requirement to post the Ten Commandments in classrooms is now blocked in the five Louisiana school districts involved in the lawsuit and may be implemented in the remaining 67, pending appeal.
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill hailed the decision, which came in response to an emergency motion filed by state attorneys, who argued that U.S. District Judge John deGravelles exceeded his authority with his Nov. 12 ruling, which mandated statewide notification of the law’s unconstitutionality.
“The Fifth Circuit grants our motion to BLOCK the district court’s attempt to enjoin the Ten Commandments law statewide. I look forward to immediately working with all of our school boards who are not involved in this lawsuit to implement the law soon,” Murrill said in a post on X.
State attorneys plan to appeal the entirety of deGravelles’s order, which was still left intact for five school districts named in the lawsuit.
The law, enacted by Louisiana’s Legislature and signed by Gov. Jeff Landry in June, requires a specific version of the Ten Commandments to be displayed in all K–12 public classrooms and at public universities by Jan. 1, 2025. It mandates that the Ten Commandments be displayed on an 11×14-inch poster or framed document in a large, readable font. It also requires a 200-word context statement highlighting their historical role in American public education.
The law was challenged in court, with the plaintiffs alleging in their complaint that the law violates their rights under the Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
“The Ten Commandments displays required under state law will create an unwelcoming and oppressive school environment for children, like ours, who don’t believe in the state’s official version of scripture,” Darcy Roake, a minister in the liberal religious movement Unitarian Universalism and a plaintiff in the case, said in a statement. “We believe that no child should feel excluded in public school because of their family’s faith tradition, and we are optimistic that the court will grant our motion for a preliminary injunction.”
In a Nov. 12 ruling that sided with the plaintiffs, deGravelles described the law as “overtly religious” and “unconstitutional on its face.” He barred state Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley and the state education board from implementing it and directed them to notify all school boards of its unconstitutionality.
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