A group of left-wing civil liberties organizations filed a federal lawsuit Monday challenging a new Louisiana law requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms.
The American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation are behind the lawsuit, representing school students. The Ten Commandments law passed the Republican-controlled state legislature by a significant margin and was signed into law by Gov. Jeff Landry (R-LA) last week.
The suit was filed against Dr. Cade Brumley, Louisiana state superintendent of education, and various state education officials.
“The Ten Commandments law passed with overwhelming support in Louisiana’s state legislature and was enthusiastically signed by our Governor,” Brumley told the Washington Examiner in a statement. “I look forward to implementing the law and defending Louisiana’s sovereign interest to select classroom content fundamental to America’s foundation.”
The lawsuit argues that the law violates both the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause in the First Amendment. The law mandates that all K-12 public school classrooms and state-funded universities display the Ten Commandments.
While some opponents of the law claim the Ten Commandments exclude some non-Abrahamic religions, proponents say the Ten Commandments are not exclusively religious and are an important historical text as well, being that they are “foundational documents of our state and national government,” according to the text of the law.
“Permanently posting the Ten Commandments in every Louisiana public-school classroom, rendering them unavoidable, unconstitutionally pressures students into religious observance, veneration, and adoption of the state’s favored religious scripture,” the lawsuit said. “It also sends the harmful and religiously divisive message that students who do not subscribe to the Ten Commandments … do not belong in their own school community and should refrain from expressing any faith practices or beliefs that are not aligned with the state’s religious preferences. And it substantially interferes with and burdens the right of parents to direct their children’s religious education and upbringing.”
The lawsuit argues that the specific version of the Ten Commandments that the law requires could be seen as exclusionary of Jews, which plaintiff-side parent Joshua Herlands argued, saying, “Politicians have absolutely no business forcing their religious beliefs on my kids or any kids, or attempting to indoctrinate them with what they think is the right version of a particular piece of religious text.”
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Herlands also argued in the lawsuit that the Ten Commandments are not gender inclusive and also endorse “personal servitude” because they use terms such as “manservant” or “maidservant” when directing people not to “covet thy neighbor’s wife.”
Laws similar to Louisiana’s have been enacted and challenged before, such as a Kentucky law in 1980, where the Supreme Court decided there was no secular purpose to displaying the Ten Commandments. Again in 2005, the Supreme Court decided a display outside of Kentucky courthouses violated the Constitution. However, in the same year, the Supreme Court also decided that a Ten Commandments display outside the Texas state capitol in Austin did not violate the Establishment Clause.
