Guest column: Louisiana’s Ten Commandments law is in line with the constitution and history

Last year, Gov. Jeff Landry signed a bill that requires public schools to post the Ten Commandments. Other states are considering similar laws.

Cue the secular outrage. The ACLU was joined by several leftist organizations in a lawsuit challenging the law nearly before the ink from the governor’s signature had time to dry.

The new law, according to them, threatens the very foundation of our republic — a republic whose law, of course, is built on concepts found in the Ten Commandments. Recently, a federal judge, appointed to the bench by President Barack Obama, agreed, stopping the law from being implemented. Now, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, considered by many to be the most conservative appeals court, will review that decision in oral arguments Thursday.

Liz Murrill, Louisiana’s attorney general, who supports the law, said this debate is “far from over.” She’s right about that.

Admittedly, these are tough days for those who for decades successfully campaigned to remove any vestiges of religious texts inscribed in public settings and which made up the very fabric of our nation.

For much of that time, they had the U.S. Supreme Court on their side with its religiously hostile Lemon test. That test made it easy for courts to sandblast religious inscriptions, tear down monuments and label anything that secularists deemed offensive as the “establishment of religion.”

But in its 2022 decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the Supreme Court once and for all concluded that Lemon should be scrapped. The justices made clear, “This Court long ago abandoned Lemon and its endorsement test offshoot. … In place of Lemon and the endorsement test, this Court has instructed that the Establishment Clause must be interpreted by reference to historical practices and understandings.”

The Kennedy decision came after the court, in 2019, in The American Legion v. American Humanist Association, determined that a cross-shaped 100-year-old World War I memorial on public land was perfectly constitutional. 

In that landmark ruling, Justice Samuel Alito warned, “A government that roams the land, tearing down monuments with religious symbolism and scrubbing away any reference to the divine, will strike many as aggressively hostile to religion.”

Those decisions changed the legal framework in America. For over half a century, courts and government officials could knee-jerk respond to any public display of religion with a quick cancel. Not anymore. The presumption now is that a religious display is constitutional.

But some may wonder, what about inside schools? Are public displays referencing religion in the classroom constitutional?

The answer is a resounding yes. Justice Anthony Kennedy changed how the courts must look at religious displays and expression in the light of history. Eliminating Lemon makes Stone v. Graham, a 5-4 decision that banished Ten Commandments from schools and relied on Lemon, a relic of a previous time when religion was censored from public life. 

Our history unmistakably teaches us that the Ten Commandments were widely displayed in schools for the first century of our nation. And, of course, under the secularists’ legal regime, public schools across the nation would need to cancel all field trips to our nation’s capital. After all, a simple walking tour of the magnificent buildings that proudly display depictions of the Ten Commandments are all around Washington, D.C., including inside the U.S. Supreme Court.

Now, those despising the presence of any “religiously expressive” display bear the burden of proof. They must demonstrate precisely how the “monument, symbol, or practice” violates the First Amendment. In light of the court’s “strong presumption of constitutionality” for displays in keeping with the history and tradition of our country, that will be almost impossible.

Which brings us to Louisiana. 

The Pelican State has rightly recognized the history and tradition of the Ten Commandments in the state. Putting this historic document on schoolhouse walls is a great way to remind students of the foundations of American and Louisiana law.

We applaud Louisiana for being the first, but by no means the last, state to take this bold step for religious liberty.