Lawsuit challenges new Louisiana law requiring classrooms to display the Ten Commandments

Civil liberties groups filed a lawsuit Monday to block Louisiana’s new law that requires the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every public school classroom, a measure they contend is unconstitutional.FILE - A copy of the Ten Commandments is posted along with other historical documents in a hallway of the Georgia Capitol, Thursday, June 20, 2024, in Atlanta.

Plaintiff Joshua Herlands has two young children in New Orleans public schools who, like their father, are Jewish. There are multiple versions of the Ten Commandments, and Herlands said the specific version mandated for classroom walls does not align with the version from his faith. He worries the display will send a troubling message to his kids and others that “they may be lesser in the eyes of the government.

“The state’s main interest in passing H.B. 71 was to impose religious beliefs on public-school children, regardless of the harm to students and families,” the lawsuit says. “The law’s primary sponsor and author, Representative Dodie Horton, proclaimed during debate over the bill that it ‘seeks to have a display of God’s law in the classroom for children to see what He says is right and what He says is wrong.

“It seems the ACLU only selectively cares about the First Amendment — it doesn’t care when the Biden administration censors speech or arrests pro-life protesters, but apparently it will fight to prevent posters that discuss our own legal history,” Murrill said in the emailed statement.In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a similar Kentucky law violated the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution, which says Congress can “make no law respecting an establishment of religion.

“We think this is already covered by clear Supreme Court precedent,” said Patrick Elliott, the legal director for the Freedom From Religion Foundation. “We think under current law that we will prevail and it would not be necessary for the Supreme Court to review it.”

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