Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry signed into law a bill mandating the Ten Commandments be displayed in all of the state’s public schools.
The bill requires every public elementary, secondary and postsecondary school in Louisiana to display the Ten Commandments, a version adapted from the King James Bible, in every classroom by 2025. The legislation was authored by Rep. Dodie Horton, a member with First Baptist Church, Haughton, Louisiana.
It also says public schools “may also display” the Ten Commandments along with the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence and the Northwest Ordinance.
‘Historic role’
“Including the Ten Commandments in the education of our children is part of our state and national history, culture and tradition,” the new law states.
The legislation states lawmakers’ belief “the historic role of the Ten Commandments accords with our nation’s history and faithfully reflects the understanding of the founders of our nation with respect to the necessity of civic morality to a functional self-government.”
The Louisiana law cites the U.S. Supreme Court’s 5–4 ruling in Van Orden v. Perry, which upheld the constitutionality of a Ten Commandments monument outside the Texas capitol.
The court’s majority emphasized the historical significance of the Ten Commandments and stated that “simply having religious content or promoting a message consistent with a religious doctrine does not run afoul of the establishment clause.”
Pledge to pass similar bill in Texas
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick promptly responded to Landry’s signing of the Louisiana law by pledging to pass a similar bill in the Texas Senate once again during the 2025 legislative session.
“Texas WOULD have been and SHOULD have been the first state in the nation to put the 10 Commandments back in our schools. … I will pass the 10 Commandments Bill again out of the Senate next session,” Patrick tweeted.
On a party-line vote last year, the Texas Senate approved a bill that would have required public schools in the state to post the Ten Commandments prominently in every classroom, but the measure died in the Texas House.
On social media, Patrick blamed Texas Speaker of the House Dade Phelan, calling the inaction by the House “inexcusable and unacceptable.”
Both the law approved in Louisiana and that was proposed last year in Texas dictates the wording of the Ten Commandments — a slightly abridged version of Exodus 20:2–17 from the King James Version of the Bible.
Jews, Catholics and Protestants number the commandments differently, and the way they are worded varies. In both the Louisiana and Texas bills, the mandated version followed the Protestant approach.
Opposing views, lawsuit
Holly Hollman, general counsel and associate executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, lamented the Louisiana action.
“It is a sad day for religious freedom when government officials in America take on the role of high priest, selecting favored Scripture passages and mandating their permanent display in public school classrooms,” Hollman said. “Families, not government authorities, are responsible for teaching and guiding children in religious matters.”
Horton, who successfully championed a law last year to allow the posting in schools of the national motto, “In God We Trust” (which received relatively little pushback), told the Baptist Message that she did not anticipate the negative response that has erupted around the country.
Four political activist groups — American Civil Liberties Union, its Louisiana chapter, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom from Religion Foundation — announced through a June 19 press release their intentions to file a lawsuit “to challenge a new Louisiana law that requires all public elementary, secondary, and postsecondary schools to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom.”
They cited Stone v. Graham, a 1980 Supreme Court ruling that used the “Lemon Test” (three questions used to determine whether a challenged state statute is permissible under the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution), to conclude a Kentucky “Ten Commandments” law was unconstitutional.
The joint statement claimed that Louisiana’s law would result in “religious coercion” as well as “send a chilling message to [some] students and families … that they do not belong, and are not welcome, in our public schools.”
The four opponents to Louisiana’s new law, however, did not acknowledge that the U.S. Supreme Court formally ruled in 2019 that the “Lemon Test” is invalid (in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, involving the “praying coach,” the Court said that government cannot be hostile to religious expression).
Horton said the Ten Commandments “are in all statutes in one form or another,” calling the moral principles “a plumb line from which all our laws are derived.”
Louisiana’s Ten Commandments law, she noted, was crafted specifically with respect to active Supreme Court precedents in order to pass judicial scrutiny moving forward.
Horton lamented that opposing viewpoints have had so much “influence in our schools the last fifty or so years,” especially in removing God from the classroom.
“Our poor kids are being indoctrinated with so many false ideologies,” she said, pointing out the irony that the ACLU is suing Louisiana for wanting to display the moral code in the Ten Commandments at the same time it is suing Virginia to let teachers “transition children behind their parents’ backs.”
Regardless, Horton said, “I’m not asking schools to teach it, but to display it. Kids need to see who is actually telling them, ‘It’s not good to steal, to lie, to murder; and that it’s a good thing to honor and obey your parents.’”
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was compiled from reports by Ken Camp and Will Hall of Baptist Standard and Baptist Message, respectively.
