A coalition of civil-liberties organizations filed a lawsuit against the Louisiana state government Monday over a law mandating the display of the Ten Commandments that Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry (R.) signed on Wednesday.
Led by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the group includes the ACLU’s Louisiana state chapter, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom from Religion Foundation.
In a Monday press release, ACLU of Louisiana executive director Alanah Odoms argued that the law represents an impingement on the principles of separation of church and state.
“By filing this lawsuit, Louisianans clap back and let the Governor know he can’t use religion as a cover for repression,” Odoms said in the statement. “Public schools are not Sunday schools. We must protect the individual right of students and families to choose their own faith or no faith at all. The separation of church and state is a bedrock of our nation’s founding principles; the ten commandments are not.”
Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, pinned blame on the supposed threat of Christian nationalism.
“This lawsuit is necessary to protect the religious freedom of Lousiana public schoolchildren and their families,” Laser said. “Not just in Louisiana, but all across the country, Christian Nationalists are seeking to infiltrate our public schools and force everyone to live by their beliefs. Not under our watch. Secular, inclusive public schools that welcome all students regardless of their belief system form the backbone of our diverse and religiously pluralistic communities. This nation must recommit to our foundational principle of church-state separation before it’s too late. Public education, religious freedom, and democracy are all on the line.”
In the filing, plaintiffs allege that “the Act includes false statements relating to a purported history and connection between the Ten Commandments and government and public education in the United States” and argue that “there is no longstanding tradition of permanently displaying the Ten Commandments in public-school classrooms in Louisiana or the United States more generally.”
Expecting a legal battle, Landry said at a fundraiser days before he signed the bill that he “can’t wait to be sued.” Should the United States Supreme Court ultimately hear the case, it will determine whether the precedent set in the 1980 Stone v. Graham ruling will continue to stand.
In his dissent in that case, then-Associate Justice William Rehnquist wrote that a Kentucky statute mandating the display of the Ten Commandments did not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, arguing that, though “the asserted secular purpose may overlap with what some may see as a religious objective,” this alone “does not render it unconstitutional,” as “the Ten Commandments have had a significant impact on the development of secular legal codes of the Western World.”