Louisiana public schools and universities will know in the next few weeks if they must comply with a new law requiring each classroom to display the Ten Commandments.
On Monday, a federal judge heard arguments over whether to block the mandate—the only one of its kind in the country—while the state faces a lawsuit from parents who claim it violates the First Amendment, The Baton Rouge Advocate reported.
The parents, backed by groups advocating for civil rights and church-state separation, sued shortly after Louisiana passed the law in June. They argued that the Ten Commandments posters would infringe on students’ religious freedom. The state countered that the legal challenge doesn’t hold because the posters haven’t gone up in classrooms and could be displayed in a way that doesn’t violate the Constitution.
“We think it’s premature,” Louisiana attorney general Liz Murrill said in The Advocate. “What the posters say, where they are posted, when they are posted—all of that matters for legal purposes.”
State lawmakers have defended the Ten Commandments mandate, arguing that the biblical directives belong in public education because of their influence on the country’s founding documents. They note that the commandments are depicted in other government settings, such as the US Supreme Court.
In Louisiana, 84 percent of the population is Christian, 1 in 7 of whom are Southern Baptist. Murrill, a Republican and longtime member of University Baptist Church in Baton Rouge, said her faith has “guided and informed” her decisions in office.
The Ten Commandments law was proposed by State Rep. Dodie Horton, also a Southern Baptist. According to World magazine, Horton was inspired by an email from WallBuilders, the Christian organization founded by David Barton that sets out to “restore America’s biblical foundation.”
Steve Green, a law professor specializing in First Amendment issues, was called by the plaintiffs and testified on Monday that the Ten Commandments’ influence on the country’s historic documents had been overstated. Green is the former legal director for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which has also sided with the parents opposing the law.
Judge John deGravelles, who heard the case this week in US district court in Baton Rouge, said he will decide on the law by November 15. If the mandate stays, Louisiana schools would be expected to comply starting January 1, 2025.
The law requires each public elementary, secondary, and postsecondary school to display the Ten Commandments in “large, easily readable font” on posters that measure at least 11 by 14 inches. The posters should be paid for using donor funds.
The state designated the wording of the Ten Commandments, based mostly on the list given in Exodus 20 in the King James Version. The state’s text starts with “I AM the LORD thy God” but also includes the line “Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven images,” which isn’t word-for-word from any major translation.
The posters must also contain a provided context statement, which notes that the Ten Commandments “were a prominent part of American public education for almost three centuries.”
Sample posters shared by state officials in August varied widely: One displayed the commandments flanked by Moses and US house speaker Mike Johnson, another depicted and quoted Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and one put the Ten Commandments side by side with the “Ten Duel Commandments” song from the musical Hamilton.
Advocates for public displays of the Ten Commandments cite their significance for the country and educational purpose in the history of law, but courts have often viewed such displays as primarily religious and subject to the establishment clause of the First Amendment.
The Supreme Court ruled against Kentucky’s mandate to post the Ten Commandments in classrooms in Stone v. Graham in 1980. The court later ruled in 2005 against a public display of the Ten Commandments in a county courthouse in Kentucky, while approving another Ten Commandments monument in Texas that was privately funded.
Mat Staver, the founder of the Christian legal group Liberty Counsel, argued the Kentucky courthouse case and is hopeful about the Louisiana law.
“Because of recent legal precedent and our nation’s moral foundation and religious mooring, I am confident the Ten Commandments will remain on classroom walls in Louisiana from January 2025 onward, as the law states, and hopefully set historic legal precedent,” he wrote.
The people who crafted the Louisiana law tried to craft it in a way that could withstand the legal backlash that previous attempts have faced.
“We prepared for the challenge, because our goal wasn’t a legislative success. It was to set precedent that if heard in the U.S. Supreme Court, under scrutiny, would prevail,” Gene Mills of the Louisiana Family Forum told World.
Christians who support the law, including lawmakers on both sides of the aisle in Louisiana, cite slipping morality and shifting values as reasons the Ten Commandments need to return to classrooms.
“Let’s just note that for a matter of centuries, indeed for over a millennium, that would’ve been something of basically no controversy at all,” Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Albert Mohler said while discussing the Louisiana law on his podcast. “It’s because the law of God was assumed to be at the very center of civil law.”
In June, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump celebrated the Louisiana law in an all-caps post on Truth Social, saying he loves the Ten Commandments displayed in schools “and many other places, for that matter” and the move may be “the first major step in the revival of religion, which is desperately needed, in our country.”
Some evangelicals don’t see requiring public displays of the Ten Commandments as an effective or meaningful form of influence. Old Testament scholar Carmen Joy Imes said that the commandments are meant for God’s covenant people and that perhaps the example of Daniel in Babylon is a better model for American Christians than Moses with the tablets at Sinai.
“I’m wondering what is this actually saying to children from a wide range of religious and nonreligious backgrounds to have the Ten Commandments on the wall,” she said on the Center for Pastor Theologians podcast. “What is our goal in the public square?”
If the court upholds the law in November, it’s not clear how Louisiana will monitor or enforce it, should teachers refuse to hang up the posters or should donor funding fall short of covering the costs.
The Bayou State has over 1,300 public schools, the Associated Press reported, plus nearly 1,000 classrooms at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge alone.
