BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) – Louisiana has become the first state to require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every public school classroom under a bill signed into law by the GOP. Jeff Landry on Wednesday.
The Republican Party-authored legislation requires a poster-sized display of the Ten Commandments in “large, easy-to-read font” in all public classrooms, from preschools to state-funded universities.
Opponents question the constitutionality of the law and warn that lawsuits are likely to follow. Supporters say the purpose of the measure is not only religious, but also has historical significance. The law’s language describes the Ten Commandments as “fundamental documents of our state and national government.”
The displays, which will be accompanied by a four-paragraph “context statement” describing how the Ten Commandments “were a prominent part of American public education for nearly three centuries,” are scheduled to be in classrooms by early 2025.
The posters would be paid for by donations. State resources will not be used to implement the mandate, based on the wording in the legislation.
The law also “authorizes” – but does not require – the display of the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence and the Northwest Ordinance in K-12 public schools.
Not long after the governor signed the bill, civil rights groups and organizations that want to keep religion out of government vowed to file a lawsuit to challenge it.
The law prevents students from receiving an equal education and will make children of different faiths feel unsafe at school, the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Freedom from Religion Foundation said in a joint statement Wednesday afternoon . .
“Even among those who believe in a particular version of the Ten Commandments, the specific text they adhere to may vary by religious denomination or tradition. The government should not take sides in this theological debate,” the groups said.
Similar bills requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in classrooms have been proposed in other states, including Texas, Oklahoma and Utah. However, with the threat of legal battles over the constitutionality of such measures, no state except Louisiana has had success in passing the bills into law.
Legal battles over the display of the Ten Commandments in classrooms are not new.
In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a similar Kentucky law was unconstitutional and violated the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which says Congress “shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The Supreme Court ruled that the law had no secular purpose, but rather served a clearly religious purpose.
Louisiana’s controversial law, in a state anchored in the Bible Belt, comes during a new era of conservative leadership in the state under Landry, who replaced two-term Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards in January.
The Republican Party also has a two-thirds supermajority in the Legislature, and Republicans hold every elected position statewide, paving the way for lawmakers to push a conservative agenda during the legislative session that concluded earlier this month .
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Associated Press reporter Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, contributed.
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The story has been corrected to clarify that the time for governor action has not expired. The governor signed the bill into law on Wednesday.
