Louisiana: Families File Suit to Challenge Law Requiring the Ten Commandments to be Displayed in K-College Classrooms
by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) – Several families, including clergy, are suing the state of Louisiana over a new law that requires the Ten Commandments to be displayed in an “easy-to-read, poster-sized” format in all public classrooms from kindergarten to colleges, Reuters reports.
According to the Biblical account in Exodus 20, God gave the Ten Commandments to Moses for adherence by the ancient Israelites.
Louisiana is the first US state to pass a law requiring tax-payer-funded schools to display a text that is widely associated in America with Christians who hold the Bible as a central tenet of their faith traditions.
On Monday, nine plaintiff families with children in public schools filed a legal challenge to the law in the Baton Rouge, Louisiana federal court, Reuters reports.
Seeking an injunction against the law, the plaintiffs argue that displaying the Ten Commandments in every classroom of all public schools violates the First Amendment of the US Constitution, and “simply cannot be reconciled with the fundamental religious-freedom principles that animated the founding of our nation.”
The US Supreme Court ruled in 1980 that it was unconstitutional for the state of Kentucky to require a display of the Ten Commandments in public schools, Reuters notes. However, the current conservative-majority Supreme Court may reverse that decision: the current high court recently held that a public school Christian football coach had the constitutional right to call his players to pray with him at the 50-yard line after games.
Signing the Ten Commandments law on June 19, Louisiana’s Republican Governor, Jeff Landry, said: “If you want to respect the rule of law, you’ve got to start from the original law-giver, which was Moses.”
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