BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) – Louisiana will not take official steps to enforce a law requiring the Ten Commandments to be placed in all public school classrooms until at least November, pending a court case. A federal judge approved the deal on Friday.
The case was filed in June Parents of Louisiana public school children of diverse religious backgrounds said the law violated the First Amendment’s language of prohibiting government establishment of religion and guaranteeing religious freedom. Proponents of the law argue that the Ten Commandments belong in classrooms because the commandments are historic and part of the foundation of American law.
Louisiana law requires the ordinances to be issued no later than Jan. 1, a deadline unaffected by Friday’s agreement. The defendants in the lawsuit — state education officials and several local school boards — promise not to post the ordinances in classrooms before Nov. 15 and not to develop rules to implement the law before then.
Lester Duhey, a spokesman for Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, said the defendants “did not take public-facing compliance actions until Nov. 15” to allow time for briefs, arguments and a ruling.
In 1980, the The US Supreme Court ruled A similar Kentucky law violated the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which states that Congress “shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The High Court found that the Act did not have a secular purpose but served a religious purpose.
In 2005, the Supreme Court ruled in a Kentucky court case that such scenes were unconstitutional. At the same time, the court upheld the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the Texas State Capitol in Austin.
Louisiana’s new law doesn’t require school systems to spend public money on Ten Commandments posters. This allows organizations to accept donated posters or pay for displays.
The law specifically recognizes but does not require other posts in public schools, including: the Mayflower Compact, signed by the Pilgrims on the Mayflower in 1620 and often referred to as America’s “first constitution”; Declaration of Independence; and the Northwest Ordinance, which established a government in the Northwest Territory — today’s Midwest — and paved the way for admitting new states into the Union.
The legal challenge to the law came shortly after two-term Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards was signed by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry in January. Landry’s inauguration marked a complete GOP takeover of state government in a Bible Belt state where the party already held every statewide elected office and a majority in the Legislature.
