When the Louisiana House of Representatives earlier this year debated a bill requiring posting of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms, the measure’s sponsor, state Rep. Dodie Horton (R-Haughton), blithely dismissed the concerns of those who might not want to be exposed to or present a religious code in public institutions.
“I’m not concerned with an atheist. I’m not concerned with a Muslim,” Horton said. “I’m concerned with our children looking and seeing what God’s law is.”
Such a purely religious motivation failed to concern Horton’s fellow legislators. The bill sailed through both houses of the state legislature and was signed into law June 19 by Gov. Jeff Landry (R).
Now that the measure is law, Americans United and its allies are prepared to act and will challenge the measure, H.B. 71, in federal court.
“We are preparing a lawsuit to challenge H.B. 71,” read a statement issued jointly by Americans United, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Louisiana and the Freedom From Religion Foundation. “The law violates the separation of church and state and is blatantly unconstitutional. The First Amendment promises that we all get to decide for ourselves what religious beliefs, if any, to hold and practice, without pressure from the government. Politicians have no business imposing their preferred religious doctrine on students and families in public schools.”
Continued the statement, “Louisiana’s communities and public schools are religiously diverse, yet H.B. 71 would require school officials to promote specific religious beliefs to which people of many faiths, and those of no faith, do not subscribe. Even among those who may believe in some version of the Ten Commandments, the particular text that they adhere to can differ by religious denomination or tradition. The government should not be taking sides in this theological debate, and it certainly should not be coercing students to submit day in and day out to unavoidable promotions of religious doctrine.”
AU and its allies assert that the law embroils the government in theological issues. Although there are several different versions of the Ten Commandments, H.B. 71 requires that a specific version, Lutheran in nature, that was vetted and approved by the state legislature, be used in classrooms.
The law also goes into considerable detail about the parameters for the displays, mandating that each classroom display the Ten Commandments on “a poster or framed document that is at least eleven inches by fourteen inches.” The Commandments must be the “central focus” of the display and “printed in a large, easily readable font.”
Under H.B. 71, every public school and public higher education institution in Louisiana would be required to display the posters. The measure also allows K-12 schools to display the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence and the Northwest Ordinance together with the Ten Commandments. (These documents are often lauded by Christian Nationalist groups because they contain religious references. Ironically, the bill does not mandate posting of the U.S. Constitution, the basis for our government, probably because its language is secular.)
Could a law like this survive a court challenge? Not if legal precedent holds.
In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Stone v. Graham that a Kentucky law mandating the display of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms violated the separation of church and state.
Kentucky lawmakers, who passed the provision in 1978, made a stab at claiming that the provision had a secular purpose. They mandated that the following words appear at the bottom of each poster: “The secular application of the Ten Commandments is clearly seen in its adoption as the fundamental legal code of Western Civilization and the Common Law of the United States.”
Sydell Stone and others sued in state court, asserting that this was a ruse and that the law had a primarily religious purpose. Kentucky courts ruled in favor of the state, leading to the appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In a brief, unsigned opinion, the high court majority found that the law lacked a secular purpose. The Commandments, the court noted, had no educational purpose, and the posting of them in schools was designed to encourage students “to read, meditate upon, and perhaps venerate and obey” the religious code.
Proponents of posting the Ten Commandments on public property have often relied on history-related arguments. But, as AU Legal Director Rebecca Markert stated, “There’s no tradition or history of displaying the Ten Commandments in the classroom. In fact, during debate over the bill, the Louisiana representatives talked about how this bill would be the first of its kind.”
And despite Christian Nationalist claims that the Ten Commandments are a cornerstone of American law, there’s simply no evidence to support this.
Historians weighed in over this question during the long-running legal battle Americans United and its allies waged against former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, who sought to display a two-ton Ten Commandments monument in the Judicial Building in Montgomery in the early 2000s.
Moore leaned heavily on the claim that the display was permissible because U.S. law is based on the Ten Commandments. That argument has one big flaw: It’s not true. In 2003, 41 law professors and legal historians weighed in with a legal brief in the lawsuit that demolished Moore’s claim.
“Aside from a failed attempt in the seventeenth century to establish a biblically based legal system in the Puritan colonies, American law is generally viewed as having secular origins,” the brief explained.
The scholars noted that “various documents and texts” figured in the development of American law, among them English common and statutory law, Roman law, the civil law of continental Europe and private international law. They listed its primary influences as the writings of William Blackstone, John Locke, Adam Smith and others, as well as the Magna Carta, the Federalist Papers and other sources.
“Each of these documents had a far greater influence on America’s laws than the Ten Commandments,” asserted the brief. “Indeed, the legal and historical record does not include significant and meaningful references to the Ten Commandments, the Pentateuch or to biblical law generally.” (For more on this, see The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American by AU Vice President of Strategic Communications Andrew L. Seidel.)
None of this mattered to Louisiana lawmakers. The legislature’s Republican supermajority pushed it through, spurning objections from Democrats.
“I was raised Catholic, and I still am a practicing Catholic, but I didn’t have to learn the Ten Commandments in school,” said state Rep. Royce Duplessis (D-New Orleans). “It is why we have church. If you want your kids to learn about the Ten Commandments, take them to church.”
Americans United and other organizations are determined to ensure that Louisiana’s public schools remain welcoming to all students, no matter their religious or nonreligious beliefs.
“All students should feel safe and welcome in our public schools,” read the statement issued by Americans United and its allies. “H.B. 71 would undermine this critical goal and prevent schools from providing an equal education to all students, regardless of faith. We will not allow Louisiana lawmakers to undermine these religious freedom rights.”