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History takes center stage as Louisiana's Ten Commandments law goes to court

An illustration of a man posting the Ten Commandments on a wall in a Louisiana classroom.
Jacob Chastant
/
LSU Reveille
An illustration of a man posting the Ten Commandments on a wall in a Louisiana classroom.

A federal judge in Baton Rouge is weighing whether a challenge to the state’s new Ten Commandments law can proceed after a hearing earlier this week.

Judge John deGravelles, an appointee of President Barack Obama, said he’ll decide by Nov. 15, when an agreement blocking the law’s implementation is set to expire — which he could extend.

The mandate passed by Louisiana’s Republican-controlled legislature requires public schools to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom by January.

Critics say the law violates the First Amendment, which protects freedom of religion, and longstanding U.S. Supreme Court precedent. Some also argue it’s part of a widespread movement to embed conservative Christian beliefs in government.

Regardless of whether the case moves forward, Monday’s hearing offered a preview of both sides’ arguments.

The plaintiffs, nine Louisiana families — some religious, some not — claim their children will be harmed if the Ten Commandments are posted in public schools.

However, state attorneys argue the parents can’t challenge the law until the posters go up and have asked the judge to dismiss the suit.

“It matters to me what my children see every day,” said Darcy Roake, a Unitarian Universalist minister, whose children attend a charter school in New Orleans.

Roake and her husband, who is Jewish, are among the parents suing the state. While both are religious, neither follow the version of the Ten Commandments that would be displayed in schools, she said.

If the law takes effect, Roake said, “It would be incredibly difficult.”

“There will be some decisions that not only myself but other parents in the public school system would have to make,” she said.

Despite the detailed law, attorneys for the state argue since the posters haven’t been printed or hung up, allegations of harm are hypothetical.

“There really is no case that is ripe for the judge to decide,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill told reporters after the hearing.

She stressed context is important. “What the posters say, where they are posted, when they are posted. All of that matters for legal purposes.”

In 1980, the Supreme Court said in Stone v. Graham that requiring schools in Kentucky to post the Ten Commandments “had no secular legislative purpose,” was “plainly religious in nature” and therefore unconstitutional.

Heather Weaver, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said in court Monday that based on Stone, Louisiana’s law isn’t constitutional.

For one, the law isn’t religiously neutral, Weaver said. She added, “There is no compelling state interest" beyond establishing religion, which isn’t constitutional. And it isn’t a passive display.

“Instead, they’ve decided to hit students over the head with it.”

The court did say that the document can be used in schools when integrated into the curriculum as part of the study of history, civilization, ethics and comparative religion.

But things have changed since Stone.

At the time, the justices used a legal standard known as the Lemon test that was abandoned in a 2022 ruling, Kennedy v. Bremerton School District.

In that case, the court upheld a high school football coach's right to pray and adopted a new standard to evaluate whether something violates the First Amendment: Is the law consistent with the country’s history and traditions?

Given these changes and Stone’s original carve-outs, state attorneys argue Louisiana’s law is constitutional.

‘Prominent part’

State law requires schools to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom in "large, easily readable font." Posters must be at least 11 by 14 inches, though they can be bigger.

It requires a specific version of the commandments from the King James Bible version, which is a Protestant text, as opposed to a Catholic or Jewish interpretation.

A sample poster displaying the Ten Commandments created by Louisiana's Department of Justice.
Louisiana Office of the Attorney General
A sample poster displaying the Ten Commandments created by Louisiana's Department of Justice.

Posters also have to include a context statement that's several paragraphs long. It starts with, "The Ten Commandments were a prominent part of American public education for almost three centuries."

But plaintiffs argue that isn't true.

Attorneys spent most of the hearing on a report produced for the plaintiffs that disputes the state's argument that the Ten Commandments were widely used in schools and served as a foundation for the U.S. government.

"We have a lot of founding myths, and this is one of them," the report's author, Steven Green, said in court on Monday.

Attorneys for the state asked the judge to exclude the report, saying it's subjective and that other historians disagree. They argued Green, a professor of law and religious studies at Willamette University in Oregon, is biased and doesn't meet the standards for an expert witness.

Green worked for Americans United for Separation of Church and State more than 20 years ago. The group, along with the ACLU and the Freedom from Religious Foundation, is challenging the law.

Attorneys for the state also dug into his methodology, arguing he cherry-picked documents.

On the stand, Green suggested that's what the state is doing.

He pointed to Louisiana's law, which says:

"History records that James Madison, the fourth President of the United States of America, stated that '(w)e have staked the whole future of our new nation … upon the capacity of each of ourselves to govern ourselves according to the moral principles of the Ten Commandments."

Green said the Madison quote isn't real. He said it comes from a book by David Barton, a prominent Christian Nationalist, and can't be found in any primary source documents.

"It's completely inconsistent with anything [Madison] would have said," Green said in court. "It doesn't make sense."

He said the founders focused on separating church and state to prevent religious conflict and coercion, which they feared would undermine the new nation.

When it came to education, Green said early private schools used overtly religious books, like the New England Primer referenced in Louisiana's law. But that book wasn't used in public schools, he said.

While McGuffy Readers, popular workbooks also cited in the state's law, sometimes included the Ten Commandments, Green said references were generally limited to just one or two lessons. Rarely was the document included in total, he said, and the books became more secular with time.

Green said while history is interpretive, these are objective facts.

The judge appeared to agree and pushed back on attempts to discredit Green.

"He's got a CV that would choke a horse," Judge deGravelles said from the bench.

"Somebody's gotta make this historical call," he said. "It needs to be based on something."

After the hearing, Murrill said she historians' views, including Green's, should be left to amicus briefs.

"He obviously wasn't alive at the time that these things happened," she said. "His testimony was admittedly subjective … There are other historians who don't agree with him."

Regardless of the judge's decision on the issues at hand, Murrill told reporters she thinks a challenge to Louisiana's law could reach the U.S. Supreme Court, though maybe not this case.

A teacher in New Orleans challenged the law late last month in a separate federal case filed in the state's eastern district. The plaintiff, Chris Dier, works at Benjamin Franklin High School and is a former Louisiana teacher of the year.

In recent years, the court, which now has a conservative supermajority, has started to take down the wall between church and state.

Judge deGravelles said Monday that he'll decide by Nov. 15 whether the case brought by families, Roake v. Brumley, can move forward. If he throws out the suit, plaintiffs can try again once the posters are up.

Alanah Odoms, executive director of the ACLU of Louisiana, says while the plaintiffs are confident, "If we lose, then we're in a totally different world."

Aubri Juhasz covers education, focusing on New Orleans' charter schools, school funding and other statewide issues. She also helps edit the station’s news coverage.

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