After Louisiana became the first state to require public classrooms to display the Ten Commandments, the American Civil Liberties Union announced it will challenge the new law.
“The law violates the separation of church and state and is blatantly unconstitutional,” the ACLU of Louisiana, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom from Religion Foundation said in a joint statement on Thursday.
“The First Amendment promises that we all get to decide for ourselves what religious beliefs, if any, to hold and practice, without pressure from the government,” the statement continued. “Politicians have no business imposing their preferred religious doctrine on students and families in public schools.”
The lawsuit comes after Gov. Jeff Landry (R-LA) dared someone to come after him. “I can’t wait to be sued,” the Republican governor said last week. Louisiana’s legislature passed the law last month, mandating all classrooms from kindergarten to state-funded universities to display the Ten Commandments starting in 2025.
In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a similar law in Kentucky after determining the law lacked a secular purpose and served solely religious interests.
However, Louisiana’s law argues that religious reasons are not the only reason why the Ten Commandments should be displayed.
The Ten Commandments are described in the law’s text as “foundational documents of our state and national government.”
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“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,'” the text says. The law calls for the displays of the Ten Commandments to be paired with a four-paragraph “context statement” describing how the Ten Commandments “were a prominent part of American public education for almost three centuries.”
The Ten Commandments are a biblical text from Exodus 20, often used by Christians as a moral code for life.
- You shall have no other gods before Me.
- You shall not make idols.
- You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.
- Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
- Honor your father and your mother.
- You shall not murder.
- You shall not commit adultery.
- You shall not steal.
- You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
- You shall not covet.