Civil rights groups on Monday filed a lawsuit against Louisiana’s House Bill 71, which mandates that all public schools display the Ten Commandments. File Photo by Michael Kleinfeld/UPI | License Photo
June 24 (UPI) — Civil liberties groups are suing Louisiana over its controversial rule mandating the Ten Commandments be displayed in public schools, arguing it is unconstitutional.
Gov. Jeff Landry signed House Bill 71 into law last week, requiring the Ten Commandments to be displaced in large, easily readable font inside all public elementary and high schools as well as state-funded universities by the start of 2025.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which had vowed to sue the state over H.B. 71, on Monday filed a lawsuit along with its Louisiana branch on behalf of a multi-faith group of nine families with children in the state’s public schools.
In the lawsuit, they allege the rule violates longstanding U.S. Supreme Court precedent concerning the separation of church and state as well as the parents’ First Amendment right to direct their children’s religious education and upbringing.
“Permanently posting the Ten Commandments in every Louisiana public-school classroom — rendering them unavoidable — unconstitutionally pressures students into religious observance, veneration and adoption of the state’s favored religious scripture,” the lawsuit states.
It continues that displaying the Ten Commandments communicates to students who do not follow that specific doctrine “the harmful and religiously divisive message” that they “do not belong in their own school community and should refrain from expressing any faith practices or beliefs that are not aligned with the state’s religious preferences.”
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit — who allege that Louisiana’s main interest in passing the law was to impose religious beliefs on public school children — include a Unitarian Universalist minister, a Presbyterian reverend, nonreligious parents, a Jewish parent and an atheist.
They are asking the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana to declare H.B. 71 is in violation of the First Amendment and prevent the Ten Commandments from being displayed in schools.
“This law sends a contrary message of religious intolerance that one denomination or faith system is officially preferable to others, and that those who don’t adhere to it are lesser in worth and status,” plaintiff Rev. Jeff Sims said in a statement.
“As a pastor and father, I cannot, in good conscience, sit by silently while our political representatives usurp God’s authority for themselves and trample our fundamental religious-freedom rights.”
Similar laws have been proposed in conservative states, such as Texas, where Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick late last week vowed to pass such a bill.
In 1980, a similar law in Kentucky was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled it violated the First Amendment of the Constitution as the Ten Commandments is not secular.
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