Lawsuit delays publication of Ten Commandments – The Journal

A copy of the Ten Commandments is hung along with other historical documents in a hallway of the Georgia Capitol on June 20 in Atlanta. John Bazemore,/The Associated Press

John Bazemore

Judge agrees to wait until at least November for some classrooms

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana — Louisiana will not take official steps to enforce a law requiring the Ten Commandments to be posted in all public school classrooms in the state until November while a lawsuit moves through the courts, according to an agreement approved Friday by a federal judge.

The lawsuit was filed in June by parents of Louisiana public school children from various religious backgrounds, who said the law violates the language of the First Amendment, which prohibits the government from establishing religion and guarantees religious freedom. Supporters of the law argue that the Ten Commandments belong in classrooms because the commandments are historic and part of the foundation of U.S. law.

Louisiana law requires the commandments to be posted by Jan. 1, a deadline that is not affected by Friday’s agreement. The agreement ensures that the defendants in the lawsuit — state education officials and several local school boards — will not post the commandments in classrooms before Nov. 15, and will not make rules regulating the law’s implementation before then.

Lester Duhe, a spokesman for Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, said the defendants “have agreed to take no public compliance measures until Nov. 15” to allow time for pleas, arguments and a sentencing.

In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a similar Kentucky law violated the establishment of religion clause of the U.S. Constitution, which states that Congress “shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The Supreme Court ruled that the law had no secular purpose, but rather served a clearly religious purpose.

In 2005, the Supreme Court ruled that such displays in two Kentucky courthouses violated the Constitution. At the same time, the court upheld a Ten Commandments marker on the grounds of the Texas state Capitol in Austin.

Louisiana’s new law does not require school systems to spend public money on Ten Commandments posters. It allows the systems to accept donated posters or money to pay for the displays.

The law also specifically authorizes, but does not require, other features in public schools, including: the Mayflower Compact, signed in 1620 by religious pilgrims aboard the Mayflower and often referred to as America’s “First Constitution”; the Declaration of Independence; and the Northwest Ordinance, which established a government in the Northwest Territory — in the present-day Midwest — and created a path for the admission of new states to the Union.

The legal challenge to the law came shortly after it was signed by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican who succeeded two-term Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards in January. Landry’s inauguration marked a full GOP takeover of state government in a Bible Belt state where the party already held every other state elected office and a supermajority in the Legislature.