One supporter of the ruling said it should send “a message to Christian Nationalists” against imposing their beliefs.
A federal judge has blocked a state law in Louisiana that aimed to require that the Ten Commandments be prominently displayed in classrooms, finding that the law is likely an unconstitutional endorsement of religion that violates students’ and parents’ rights.
A coalition of parents upset with the law, which was enacted earlier this summer (and set to be implemented starting in January), sued the state, arguing that the display of the Ten Commandments would infringe on their children’s right to attend a public school setting free of religious indoctrination.
The Ten Commandments are a religious teaching featured in all Abrahamic faiths. Conservative Christians in the U.S. have tried, for decades, to include the commandments in public school instruction, violating the separation of church and state standard within the U.S. Constitution as well as in several state constitutions, including Louisiana’s.
GOP lawmakers in Louisiana, including Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, attempted to justify the new law by claiming that the requirement to display a poster of the Ten Commandments in every classroom (from kindergarten to the university level) had historical and educational relevance. But during his signing statement, Landry failed to provide any real rationale for why the commandments should be required in classrooms.
“If you want to respect the rule of law, you’ve got to start from the original lawgiver, which was Moses,” Landry said earlier this year.
