NEW ORLEANS (WVUE)—A new Louisiana law requiring public schools to display the Ten Commandments is fueling debate inside the state and around the country, with promises of legal challenges.
Governor Jeff Landry, a Republican, signed House Bill 71 into law this week, but the ACLU of Louisiana plans to sue Landry in federal court over the new law, citing constitutional grounds.
“When children have the Ten Commandments, which are a very sacred Judeo-Christian text within the context of the classroom, we’re certainly suggesting to them, if not, in fact, even endorsing a particular religion in the classroom, and that we find to be violative of both the Constitution and the First Amendment,” said Alanah Odoms, Executive Director of the ACLU of Louisiana.
However, Christian conservatives and others who support the new law strongly support the requirement.
“We’re certainly, at [La.] Family Forum, excited about the possibility of reintroducing authentic history and a little bit of Western civilization in the education system. So, we think it’s a positive move in the right direction, and done appropriately, will have positive effects,” said Gene Mills, President of Louisiana Family Forum.
Odoms said two clauses in the U.S. Constitution apply to problems with the new law.
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“The first is called the free exercise of religion clause and that means that each person has the opportunity and the right to be able to decide what faith they will be, and they also have the opportunity to decide whether they will have a faith at all,” Odoms said. “And so, that actually works in conjunction with another really important clause in the First Amendment called the establishment clause.”
Further, she said, “The government cannot select or prefer one religion over another, and cannot prefer religion over a non-religion. So, it can’t proselytize. it can’t coerce people to choose a certain faith and so what we find with HB 71 is that it actually violates both clauses, the free exercise clause and the establishment clause of the first amendment.”
Mills said in response, “I disagree. I would follow up with a question that’s not a rhetorical question, which religion does it impose?”
Some argue that if opponents do not prevail in court against the new law, it could allow those of other faiths to demand that tenets of their religion be posted in Louisiana’s public school classrooms.
“I think people certainly could make an argument that in order to ensure that the government is not favoring one religion over another, that other religious ideas and other religious texts, perhaps should also be in the classroom,” Odoms said. “But I think the more important thing to think about is the fact that there’s 40 years of longstanding precedent in this country, which was articulated in a case called Stone versus Graham, that says that you cannot pass a law that has a non-secular purpose or a religious purpose. and you cannot essentially validate the government choosing a religion, one religion over another.”
Mills believes the law will withstand legal challenges.
“My sense is this is going to withstand constitutional challenge because it was written in such a way to reflect both the secular and the historical context that the Decalogue has had in both America’s foundation and in Western civilization. There is no censorship, there’s no forced religion, there is no imposing, there’s no public expenses. This is done at not a taxpayer dollar, but with resources that are found outside of taxpayer dollars,” he said.
Decalogue is another term for the Ten Commandments.
Odoms said, “And if we mandate that children go to school, we also have to be really careful that the government is not mandating a certain religion.”
Louisiana Republican Attorney General Liz Murrill issued the following statement:
“The 10 Commandments are pretty simple (don’t kill, steal, cheat on your wife), but they also are important to our country’s foundations. Moses, who you may recall brought the 10 Commandments down from Mount Sinai, appears eight times in carvings that ring the United States Supreme Court Great Hall ceiling. I look forward to defending the law.”
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