Louisiana officials cannot enforce the law, known as HB 71, and must notify schools that the law is unconstitutional, said deGravelles, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama.
The 177-page ruling, which Attorney General Liz Murrill promised to appeal, represents a setback for Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, a staunch conservative who lobbied hard for the law and said he “couldn’t wait to be sued.” Civil liberties groups and parents of Louisiana public-school students quickly obliged, and on Tuesday they celebrated the ruling.
Alanah Odoms, the executive director of ACLU Louisiana, answers questions outside of the Russell B. Long Federal Building and United States Courthouse after the morning session of a hearing challenging the state’s Ten Commandments Law on Monday, October 21, 2024 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
“Religious freedom — the right to choose one’s faith without pressure — is essential to American democracy,” said Alanah Odoms, executive director of the ACLU of Louisiana, which represented the plaintiffs. “Today’s ruling ensures that the schools our plaintiff’s children attend will stay focused on learning, without promoting a state-preferred version of Christianity.”
Murrill said in a prepared statement that “We strongly disagree with the court’s decision and will immediately appeal, as H.B. 71’s implementation deadline is approaching on January 1, 2025.”
Landry did not respond to a request for comment.
Closely watched case
Louisiana is the first state to require public schools to post the Ten Commandments in more than 40 years, after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a similar Kentucky law in 1980. In his ruling, deGravelles said the new law is “legally indistinguishable” from Stone v. Graham, the one the high court struck down.
Louisiana’s law has attracted national attention, with supporters praising it as a return to what they say are the country’s Christian roots and critics arguing that it threatens religious freedom and the separation of church and state. President-elect Donald Trump celebrated the law after it was signed, writing on social media that it could be “the first major step in the revival of religion, which is desperately needed, in our country.”
The legal challenge has also been closely watched as other Republican-led states consider similar mandates.
Gov. Jeff Landry in June signed the law requiring public schools to post the Ten Commandments.
Signed by Landry in June, the law says the Ten Commandments must be displayed in every classroom on posters measuring at least 11 by 14 inches in “large, easily readable font.” The law dictates the wording that must be displayed — including “I AM the LORD thy God. Thou shalt have no other gods before me” — and requires schools to post an accompanying statement explaining that some early American textbooks featured the Ten Commandments.
Just days after the law was signed, lawyers for parents of several public school children sued to block the law from taking effect, arguing that it violates students’ religious freedom. Subjecting students “to scriptural dictates, day in and day out,” tramples on their rights — specifically, the First Amendment clause that guarantees “free exercise” of religion, the parents’ lawsuit said.
Attorneys for the state countered that the legal challenge was premature because schools have not yet posted the commandments, which they argued could be presented in ways that wouldn’t run afoul of the U.S. Constitution. The state also argued that the displays wouldn’t violate students’ First Amendment right to decide whether and how to worship.
“Plaintiffs’ children are not required to do anything,” said the state’s motion to dismiss the case.
DeGravelles did not buy the state’s argument.
“In short, the Act is coercive to students,” his ruling said, “and, for all practical purposes, they cannot opt out of viewing the Ten Commandments when they are displayed in every classroom, every day of the year, every year of their education.”
Competing claims
Landry has forcefully supported the law and defended it with national television appearances, including one where he said that parents upset with having the Ten Commandments displayed should tell their children “not to look” at them. In a fundraising email after the lawsuit was filed, he vowed to “stand up for Judeo-Christian values” by defending the law.
In his ruling, the judge cited Landry’s fundraising email, as well as remarks by the bill’s author, state Rep. Dodie Horton, R-Haughton, who said during the debate that she wants students to see “what God’s law is.” Their statements confirm that the law’s primary purpose is religious in nature, deGravelles wrote.
“Any purported secular purpose was not sincere,” the ruling says, “but rather a sham.”
When the Supreme Court ruled in Stone v. Graham that Kentucky’s law violated the First Amendment, which prohibits the government from “establishing” any religion, the court evaluated the law’s intent. But in recent years the high court has moved away from that standard, known as the Lemon test, which said a law’s purpose must be mostly secular. Instead, it has asked whether a given law aligns with the country’s history and traditions.
“Stone v. Graham is a relic of a previous time when the Lemon test censored religion from public life and is no longer good law,” said a statement Tuesday from Hiram Sasser, executive general counsel at First Liberty Institute, a legal group that defends religious expression.
In his ruling, deGravelles said Louisiana’s law also fails the new history-and-traditions test.
“In sum, the historical evidence showed that the instances of using the Ten Commandments in public schools were too ‘scattered’ to amount to ‘convincing evidence that it was common’ at the time of the Founding,” he wrote.
In the ruling, which forbids the state from enforcing the law, deGravelles says state officials must provide “notice of this order and H.B. 71’s unconstitutionality to all Louisiana public” K-12 schools and colleges. In a statement Tuesday, the attorney general argued the order only applies to the five parishes where the plaintiffs’ children attend public school: East Baton Rouge, Livingston, Orleans, St. Tammany and Vernon.
The plaintiffs in the case identify as Jewish, Christian, Unitarian Universalist and non-religious. They are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Louisiana, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Freedom from Religion Foundation. The law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP is serving as pro bono counsel.
Rev. Darcy Roake, a plaintiff who is an ordained minister in the Unitarian Universalist Church and the parent of a child who attends a New Orleans charter school, said she was “pleased and relieved” by Tuesday’s ruling.
“As an interfaith family, we expect our children to receive their secular education in public school,” she said in a statement, “and their religious education at home and within our faith communities, not from government officials.”
