A federal judge has struck down a Louisiana law that required every public school and university classroom to display the Ten Commandments, drawing legal challenges from civil rights groups anticipating a Supreme Court battle with the state’s Republican governor.
The law clearly violates the First Amendment’s provisions against the government from establishing or favoring one religion over another, and from interfering with a right to practice a religion without government interference, according to the ruling.
There is a “real and substantial likelihood of coercion” if Louisiana students are forced to be a “captive audience” for “a specific version of the Ten Commandments, one posted in every single classroom,” District Judge John Wheadon deGravelles wrote on Tuesday.
The law signed by Governor Jeff Landry earlier this year — the first of its kind in the US — appears to be designed to invite a federal court battle that will work its way to the Supreme Court. Conservative Christian legal groups have been angling for another shot at reversing Supreme Court rulings protecting the separation of church and state for decades.
Plaintiffs in a lawsuit — which takes aim at state school officials — have argued that the law not only flies in the face of First Amendment protections but also “sends the harmful and religiously divisive message that students who do not subscribe to the Ten Commandments — or, more precisely, to the specific version of the Ten Commandments [the law] requires schools to display — 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.”
This is a developing story
