The judge overseeing a federal lawsuit challenging a new Louisiana law mandating the display of the Ten Commandments in all public-school classrooms has issued an order saying the religious directives would not be posted before Nov. 15.
Judge John deGravelles of the Middle District of Louisiana issued the order this week, explaining that the parties in the case have approved agreements affecting the potential implementation of the statute, which Gov. Jeff Landry signed into law on June 19.
“Defendant Cade Brumley (Louisiana’s superintendent of education) and defendant members of the Board of Education and Secondary Education (BESE) will not, before Nov. 15, 2024, promulgate advice, rules or regulations regarding proper implementation of the challenged statute,” deGravelles said in his order, which was signed in Baton Rouge.
The order will give the court adequate time to review briefing documents filed by the plaintiffs, who consist of nine Louisiana families of different faiths with school-age children, in support of a motion for a preliminary injunction against the law’s implementation pending the case’s resolution, according to the text of the order.
But the state Attorney General’s Office stressed that law has not been “paused” or “blocked.”
“No posters are going up before Nov. 15 because certain legal actions take time, specifically publishing rules through BESE, in addition to creating the posters,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said in a statement emailed to the Louisiana Record. “The court was considering schedules for motions, briefing, oral argument and issuing a decision. All the parties agreed nothing would occur until Nov. 15.”
Murrill indicated that the law gives a final compliance date, Jan. 1, 2025, which has not changed. She added that attorneys have no authority to change it.
“The judge declined expediting the briefing schedule because nothing would have occurred that justified it,” she said.
The law itself, however, would not have stopped school districts from implementing the policy to coincide with the start of the 2024-2025 school year.
The ACLU of Louisiana, which is representing the plaintiffs, filed its motion for a preliminary injunction on July 8. The plaintiffs had also asked for an expedited briefing in a separate motion.
In the plaintiffs’ request for an injunction, attorneys argued that the establishment clause of the First Amendment barred the government from posting the Ten Commandments in public-school classrooms. That position was also upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1980.
The new law mandates the wording of the Ten Commandments to reflect protestant beliefs rather than the version of the religious directives taught in Catholic and Jewish traditions, according to the motion.
“When students across Louisiana, including the minor-child plaintiffs, return to school this August, they will be subjected – as early as their first day of school and no later than the act’s Jan. 1, 2025, compliance deadline – to unavoidable, permanently displayed religious directives such as ‘I AM the LORD thy God. Thou shalt have no other gods before me’ …” the motion states..
The co-author of the law, Rep. Sylvia Taylor (D–Laplace), is quoted in the motion as saying that because fewer people are now attending churches in the United States, schools need to take up the slack to “bring people back to where they need to be.”
The law usurps parental authority to oversee their children’s religious upbringing and would send a message to some children that they are unwelcome in their own school community for not observing “the state’s favored religious text,” the motion says.