Dive Brief:
- A controversial Louisiana law requiring public schools and colleges to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom hit a roadblock Tuesday, when a federal district court judge temporarily paused the law in response to a lawsuit against the state challenging the measure’s constitutionality.
- Judge John deGravelles for the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana said in his court order that plaintiffs challenging H.B. 71 "have easily established a likelihood of success " in their First Amendment case.
- DeGravelles, in the 177-page order, also sternly denied the state's multiple attempts to throw a wrench in the lawsuit — including its request to dismiss the case — saying Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill's arguments in defense of the state board of education, education department and state superintendent "ring hollow."
Dive Insight:
The Tuesday court order follows another issued in July requiring state officials to take a temporary step back from rolling out the law in preparation for its Jan. 1, 2025, implementation date. That order required state officials to wait until at least Nov. 15.
However, DeGravelles said in the court document Tuesday that the law "is not neutral toward religion."
"In short, the Act is coercive to students, and, for all practical purposes, they [students] 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," he said.
The order and arguments in the case pull from the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton, another First Amendment case that was expected to impact how school districts treated issues like prayer in schools.
In that ruling, justices found that a school district violated a high school football coach's rights to religious freedom when it fired him for praying — sometimes with students — on the 50-yard line.
The Bremerton case and a number of others heard by the Supreme Court in recent years have lent themselves to issues rising out of states related to the separation of church and state.
In addition to Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah and South Carolina have recently considered or approved bills involving the Ten Commandments in schools.
Elsewhere, a handful of states have pushed to allow school chaplains in public schools after Texas passed a law doing so.
In another case related to the separation of church and state, the Oklahoma Virtual Charter School Board approved in 2023 what was set to be the nation's first religious virtual public charter school. It was set to open for the 2024-25 school year until the state Supreme Court hit the brakes on its launch.
That case — and the state Supreme Court's decision to stop the school's creation — is currently being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
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