Court allows Louisiana law requiring Ten Commandments in schools to take effect

By Nate Raymond

Feb 20 (Reuters) - A federal appeals court on Friday cleared the way for a Louisiana law requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in all classrooms of the state's public schools and universities to take effect.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans on a 11-7 vote overturned a judge's ruling declaring the state's law was unconstitutional, saying the law needed to be assessed based on how local school boards ultimately would implement it.

The ruling marked a setback for parents who had sued over the Republican-led state's enactment of the law, which they argued trampled on their religious rights under the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment.

The organizations that represented them, which included the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, in a statement said they were exploring options to continue fighting the law.

"Today’s ruling is extremely disappointing and would unnecessarily force Louisiana’s public school families into a game of constitutional whack-a-mole in every school district," they said.

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, a Republican, in a statement said schools should follow the law and that her office had issued guidance and created examples of posters demonstrating how it could be applied constitutionally.

"Don't kill or steal shouldn't be controversial," she said.

Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry, a Republican, in 2024 signed into law the measure known as H.B. 71, which required the display of posters or framed versions of the Ten Commandments in K-12 schools and state-funded colleges.

In the Christian and Jewish faiths, God revealed the Ten Commandments to the Hebrew prophet Moses.

The law made Louisiana the first state to require displays of the Ten Commandments since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a similar Kentucky law in 1980. Arkansas and Texas passed their own laws in 2025 requiring similar displays, prompting litigation and rulings blocking those laws.

A trial court judge blocked the law in November 2024, and a three-judge 5th Circuit panel upheld that ruling in October. But the full appeals court subsequently voted to hear the case, leading to Friday's decision.

In an unsigned opinion, the 5th Circuit's majority said it was "premature" to assess the law's constitutionality. Because the law gave school boards discretion on how to implement the law, context would matter.

"We do not know, for example, how prominently the displays will appear, what other materials might accompany them, or how—if at all—teachers will reference them during instruction," the majority said. "More fundamentally, we do not even know the full content of the displays themselves."

The court's majority, all appointees of Republican presidents, called their ruling narrow, saying nothing prevented future challenges to the law based on how it is applied once it had been implemented.

U.S. Circuit Judge James Ho, who was appointed by Republican President Donald Trump, concurred with the ruling but said he would have gone further and upheld the law, which he called "constitutional and consistent with our Founding traditions."

He said the Supreme Court's 1980 decision in Stone v. Graham was no longer good law after the more recent 2022 ruling in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, in which the court's 6-3 conservative majority ruled in favor of a Washington high school football coach who prayed with players on the field after games.

U.S. Circuit Judge James Dennis, in a dissenting opinion joined by four fellow appointees of Democratic presidents, called the majority's ruling a "calculated stratagem" to evade Supreme Court precedents.

"By placing that text on permanent display in public school classrooms, not in a way that is curricular or pedagogical, the State elevates words meant for devotion into objects of reverence, exposing children to government‑endorsed religion in a setting of compulsory attendance," Dennis wrote.

The case is Roake et al v Brumley et al, 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 24-30706.

For the plaintiffs: Jonathan Youngwood of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett

For the state: J. Benjamin Aguinaga of the Louisiana Department of Justice

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Louisiana's Ten Commandments law struck down by US appeals court

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Louisiana requires display of Ten Commandments in all classrooms