International Courant
Louisiana’s new legislation requiring the Ten Commandments to be posted in all public faculty lecture rooms is not going to be publicly enforced or endorsed in any means till Nov. 15, 2024, a brand new courtroom doc reveals within the ongoing authorized battle over the coverage.
Each side agreed that the Ten Commandments wouldn’t be posted in public faculty lecture rooms and that the defendants (together with the Louisiana State Board of Elementary and Secondary Training) and the faculties wouldn’t publicly implement the legislation till November.
Lester Duhe, a spokesman for the Louisiana Legal professional Normal’s Workplace, clarified that the defendants “have agreed to not take any public compliance motion till then” as a result of that may permit time for “briefing, oral arguments and a choice” earlier than the January 2025 date by which colleges will need to have the Ten Commandments in place.
The January demand stays in impact till the end result of the lawsuit is understood.
A multi-faith group of Louisiana households with kids in public colleges filed a lawsuit difficult the legislation, HB 71, which requires public colleges from kindergarten by way of highschool to show the Ten Commandments, a non secular algorithm from the Previous Testomony, in each classroom on “a poster or framed doc no less than 11 by 14 inches.”
A replica of the Ten Commandments is seen together with different historic paperwork in a hallway of the Georgia Capitol, June 20, 2024, in Atlanta.
John Bazemore/AP
By legislation, the posters can be paid for with non-public donations, not state cash. It doesn’t say what occurs if a college doesn’t comply.
The lawsuit argues that the legislation violates U.S. Supreme Court docket precedent. It cites the case of Stone v. Graham, by which the courtroom struck down an analogous state legislation. The courtroom dominated that the separation of church and state prohibited public colleges from posting the Ten Commandments in lecture rooms.
The 9 households — who’re Jewish, Christian, Unitarian Universalist and non-religious — additionally allege that the legislation constitutes non secular coercion and violates their First Modification rights: “By completely posting the Ten Commandments in each Louisiana public faculty classroom — thereby making them unavoidable — college students are unconstitutionally pressured to respect, revere, and undertake the state’s favourite non secular scriptures,” the criticism states.
It continues: “It additionally sends the damaging and religiously divisive message that college students who don’t adhere to the Ten Commandments — or, extra exactly, the precise model of the Ten Commandments that HB 71 requires colleges to show — don’t belong in their very own faculty group and will chorus from expressing non secular practices or beliefs which can be inconsistent with the state’s non secular affiliations.”
Supporters of HB 71 argue that the legislation isn’t about faith: “This isn’t preaching a Christian faith. It is not preaching any faith. It is instructing an ethical code,” the invoice’s lead sponsor and Republican Rep. Dodie Horton stated throughout a listening to in April, based on native information outlet WWL-TV.
The legislation states that the Ten Commandments are additionally traditionally vital and “mirror the understanding of our nation’s founders concerning the need of civic morality for useful self-government,” the textual content reads.
“If you wish to respect the rule of legislation, you need to begin with the unique legislator, which is Moses,” Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry stated at a information convention the place he signed a bundle of training payments.
