Louisiana lawmakers revised Ten Commandments bill to head off lawsuits. Critics aren't sold. (2024)

When Louisiana lawmakers moved last month to require schools and universities to post the Ten Commandments, civil liberties groups swiftly threatened legal action.

To try to head off potential lawsuits, lawmakers made several changes to the bill: They added citations to court rulings that allowed Ten Commandments displays in certain public spaces, included a “context statement” to post alongside the Commandments and allowed schools to also display other documents, such as the Declaration of Independence.

The overall message, as the revised bill puts it, is that it "is part of our state and national history, culture, and tradition" to include the Commandments in children's education.

“The purpose is not solely religious,” said state Sen. Jay Morris, R-West Monroe, making a case for the Commandments’ "historical significance.” They are “simply one of many documents that display the history of our country and foundation of our legal system.”

The argument apparently convinced the Senate, which voted 30-8 in favor of the amended bill Thursday. If House Bill 71 is signed into law, Louisiana will become the first state to mandate that all public universities and K-12 schools display the Ten Commandments in every classroom.

But the same civil liberties groups that challenged the earlier Ten Commandments bill, which the House passed in April, are not buying the Republican lawmakers’ latest claims. No matter how it’s dressed up, requiring schools to post a religious text violates the U.S. Constitution and erodes the separation of church and state, they argue.

“No federal court has upheld the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools, regardless of context,” said Heather Weaver, senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union. “There's a good reason for that too: Public schools shouldn’t be used to religiously indoctrinate or convert students.”

The lawmakers behind the new bill wanted to show that they stand on strong legal ground.

So Morris added an amendment to the original bill, which was authored by Rep. Dodie Horton, R-Haughton. It begins by citing a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court case, Van Orden v. Perry, that centered on a six-foot monument of the Ten Commandments outside the Texas State Capitol.

The Court ruled 5-4 that the monument did not violate the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits the government from “establishing” a religion.

“While the Commandments are religious, they have an undeniable historical meaning,” the ruling said.

But central to the Court’s decision was the context of the display: It was one of 21 historical markers and 17 monuments on the Capitol grounds. The ruling also notes that there are “limits to the government’s display of religious messages or symbols.”

“For example, this Court held unconstitutional a Kentucky statute requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments in every public schoolroom,” the 2005 opinion says, citing an earlier case, Stone v. Graham.

In that 1980 case, the Court came down strongly against mandating Ten Commandments displays in schools.

“The preeminent purpose for posting the Ten Commandments on schoolroom walls is plainly religious in nature,” the majority wrote in the Stone case, adding that the law would "induce the schoolchildren to read, meditate upon, perhaps to venerate and obey, the Commandments.”

While Morris’ amendment cites the Supreme Court’s 2005 favorable ruling on a public Commandments display, it fails to cite another ruling from the same year that came to the opposite conclusion.

In McCreary County v. American Civil Liberties Union, also from 2005, the Court found that such displays in two Kentucky county courthouses violated the Constitution. After facing a legal challenge, the counties had posted other documents — including the Declaration of Independence – next to the Commandments along with statements about the documents’ historical significance.

The Court wasn’t having it. The majority pointed to a legal precedent saying laws must have a primarily secular purpose. The secular purpose, the ruling said, must “be genuine, not a sham, and not merely secondary to a religious objective.”

Louisiana’s amended bill says that schools “may” also post the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence and the Northwest Ordinance along with the Ten Commandments.

School must also post a “context statement” with the Commandments, which begins: “The history of the Ten Commandments were a prominent part of American education for almost three centuries.” It goes on to give examples of school textbooks dating back to the 1600s that reference the Commandments.

The revised bill also removes private schools, which a Democratic lawmaker had added in an amendment to the original bill.

Lea Patterson, senior council with the First Liberty Institute, said the changes may make the bill more digestible to a court.

“It’s generally accepted in many legal cases that the Ten Commandments has historical significance,” she said, “and that its display is consistent with history and tradition, which is the governing legal test in such matters.”

But the bill’s critics are not convinced.

“This bill is unconstitutional,” said a joint statement Friday by the ACLU, the ACLU of Louisiana, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the Freedom from Religion Foundation and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The groups added that they are “closely monitoring” the bill this situation and urged concerned citizens to contact their state representatives.

“Our public schools are not Sunday schools,” the statement concluded, “and students of all faiths—or no faith—should feel welcome in them.”