Ten Commandments in Classrooms Has Caused Parents in Louisiana to File A Lawsuit

Several Louisiana families, supported by human rights organizations, have filed a federal court action to overturn the state’s recent legislation requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public schools. The lawsuit was submitted to the US district court in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on Monday. This marks the beginning of an anticipated protracted legal dispute that may ultimately reach the US Supreme Court. The nation’s long-standing separation of religion and state is something that Christian nationalists have been aching for this battle to eliminate.

Louisiana Filed A Federal Lawsuit:

Every public school must have the commandments on display under a law passed last week. It “pushes students into religious observance,” according to the parents.

A group of parents from Louisiana filed a federal lawsuit on Monday to overturn a recently passed state statute mandating that the Ten Commandments be displayed in every classroom in public schools.

It was generally anticipated that the measure, which became the only state with such a mandate when it was signed into law by Governor Jeff Landry last week, would face legal challenges.

One of the groups advocating for the parents, the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, has denounced the bill as “blatantly unconstitutional.” However, proponents of the bill were keen to go to court to take the matter to the US Supreme Court. They had high hopes that the conservative majority on the court would uphold the requirement and reverse a 1980 decision that had declared a comparable statute unconstitutional.

Nine families with children enrolled in Louisiana public schools are the plaintiffs in the case filed on Monday in Federal District Court in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Among them are the families of two Unitarian Universalists, a Presbyterian, a Jewish, an atheist, and a nonreligious person.

The families claim in the complaint that the Ten Commandments would become inevitable if posted in every elementary, secondary, and postsecondary public education classroom. As a result, the lawsuit claims that the rule “unconstitutionally forces students to observe, revere, and accept the state’s preferred religious text.”

According to proponents of the law, the Ten Commandments are more than just a religious book; they are also a historical record that served as the model for the rules of the country.

“You have to start from the original lawgiver, Moses, if you want to respect the rule of law,” Republican Mr. Landry declared as he signed the measure last week.

By January 1, 2025, all public classrooms are required by law to display the commandments on posters that measure no less than 11 by 14 inches. Additionally, the commandments must be “in a large, easily readable font” and “the central focus of the poster.” A three-paragraph statement claiming that the Ten Commandments were a “prominent part of American public education for almost three centuries” would also be included on the posters.

Advocates of the measure said that the commandments would benefit pupils morally in addition to their historical significance.

The Republican state representative who sponsored the law, Dodie Horton, said to colleagues from the House floor that the legislation will enable “our children to look up and see what God says is right and what he says is wrong.” “It doesn’t advocate for a particular religion but demonstrates the moral standards we should all uphold.”

However, the statute communicates “an opposite message of religious intolerance that one religion or faith system is officially superior to others, and that people who don’t subscribe to it are poorer in worth and status,” according to the Rev. Jeff Sims, one of the parents engaged in the lawsuit.

“As a pastor and father, I cannot, in good conscience, sit by idly while our political representatives usurp God’s authority for themselves and trample our fundamental religious freedom rights,” stated Mr. Sims, the pastor of a Presbyterian church in Covington, Louisiana, in a statement.