A federal judge in Louisiana temporarily blocked a state law on Tuesday that mandated the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools by next year.

U.S. District Court judge John deGravelles sided with a group of parents who sued the state in June days after Republican governor Jeff Landry signed the bill into law. Backed by several civil-liberties organizations, nine families argue the law violates their First Amendment right to practice religious freedom and encroaches on the separation of church and state.

Tuesday’s order halts the state from implementing the law by January 1, while the lawsuit is being litigated. The ruling doesn’t overturn the law completely.

Judge deGravelles said the law is “facially unconstitutional,” prohibiting Louisiana from enforcing the measure that mandates all public K-12 schools and colleges in the state to display posters or framed documents of the Ten Commandments.

“Each of the Plaintiffs’ minor children will be forced ‘in every practical sense,’ through Louisiana’s required attendance policy, to be a ‘captive audience’ and to participate in a religious exercise: reading and considering a specific version of the Ten Commandments, one posted in every single classroom, for the entire school year, regardless of the age of the student or subject matter of the course,” deGravelles wrote.

Louisiana attorney general Liz Murrill said she would “immediately appeal” the ruling, while lawyers representing the plaintiffs praised the decision.

The plaintiffs — who are a mix of Jewish, Christian, Unitarian Universalist, and nonreligious parents — are represented by counsel from the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU’s Louisiana chapter, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Freedom from Religion Foundation, and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP.

The judge instructed Murrill’s office to notify all public schools that the Ten Commandments law has been deemed unconstitutional as the suit plays out in court.

Louisiana became the first state to require the exhibition of the Ten Commandments in public-school classrooms since the Supreme Court struck down a similar Kentucky law in the 1980 case, Stone v. Graham. Given the precedent set in that case, Murrill expects the Louisiana suit to go before the Supreme Court.

“The question is not whether the Biblical laws can ever be put on a poster; the issue is whether, as a matter of law, there is any constitutional way to display the Ten Commandments in accordance with the minimum requirements of the Act,” deGravelles said of the precedent. “In short, the Court finds that there is not.”

The Republican attorney general has said the posters will be paid through private donations, not public education funds. Still, questions remain on what exactly happens when teachers and schools refuse to comply with the law.

The measure follows another Louisiana law that requires the display of the religious motto, “In God We Trust,” in all classrooms. That law went into effect in August 2023.

President-elect Donald Trump, who pledged to reinstitute prayer in schools following his reelection victory, praised the Ten Commandments bill after it was passed.

“I LOVE THE TEN COMMANDMENTS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS, PRIVATE SCHOOLS, AND MANY OTHER PLACES, FOR THAT MATTER,” Trump posted on Truth Social at the time. “THIS MAY BE, IN FACT, THE FIRST MAJOR STEP IN THE REVIVAL OF RELIGION, WHICH IS DESPERATELY NEEDED, IN OUR COUNTRY.”