Lawsuit challenges Louisiana’s Ten Commandments requirement for schools

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana — A lawsuit has been filed in federal court in Louisiana challenging the state’s recently passed law requiring the Ten Commandments be posted in every classroom in public schools.

The American Civil Liberties Union, representing parents of Louisiana public school children, confirmed in a post on social media that it was involved the lawsuit. The New York City law firm Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Freedom From Religion Foundation are also are plaintiffs, according to CBS News.

“Public schools are not Sunday schools,” the ACLU says in its post on social media. “Louisiana public schools must remain welcoming to all students, regardless of their faith.”

Under the legislation signed into law by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry last week, all public K-12 classrooms and state-funded universities will be required to display a poster-sized version of the Ten Commandments in “large, easily readable font” next year.

“There is no longstanding tradition of permanently displaying the Ten Commandments in public-school classrooms in Louisiana or the United States more generally,” the lawsuit says. “Indeed, for nearly half a century, it has been well settled that the First Amendment forbids public schools from posting the Ten Commandments in this manner.”

The lawsuit cites the 1980 Supreme Court decision striking down a similar law passed in Kentucky.

It also argues that Louisiana’s law “unconstitutionally pressures students into religious observance, veneration, and adoption of the state’s favored religious scripture.”

“It also sends the harmful and religiously divisive message that students who do not subscribe to the Ten Commandments — or, more precisely, to the specific version of the Ten Commandments that H.B. 71 requires schools to display — 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,” the lawsuit says. “And it substantially interferes with and burdens the right of parents to direct their children’s religious education and upbringing.”

The lawsuit filed Monday seeks a court declaration that the new law, referred to in the lawsuit as HB 71, violates First Amendment clauses forbidding government establishment of religion and guaranteeing religious liberty. It also seeks an order prohibiting the posting of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms.

Louisiana Attorney General Elizabeth Murrill has said she is looking forward to defending the state’s law. She issued a statement saying she couldn’t comment directly on the lawsuit because she had not yet seen it.

(The Associated Press contributed to this story.)