Louisiana’s intentions to put the Ten Commandments in every public classroom are fundamentally flawed, as opposed by parents in the court documents.
Parents are using legal actions to stop a new rule that the state mandates that the Ten Commandments should be displayed in every classroom in public schools. It does not come with a budget, but the schools can receive donations to buy posters or posters of the Ten Commandments.
On Monday, Attorneys filed a brief in federal court stating that the state keeps causing a debate that students are not being forced to by the presence of the Ten Commandments; however, that does not reflect reality.
The bill was signed into law by the Republican Governor Jeff Landry in June.
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A unitarian minister led parents in stating that the law violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which states that the US government cannot promote a particular religion due to freedom of association.
Many organizations, including the Americans United for Separations of Church and State and the Civil Liberties Union, have backed the plaintiffs, arguing that the law violates long-standing US Supreme Court precedent.
Parents are seeking a restraining order to stop the state from displaying posters of the Ten Commandments in schools, which will take effect in January.
The parents stated in their filing that “Defendants’ motion to close and opposition to Plaintiffs’ preliminary-injunction motion is premised on a fundamentally flawed understanding of what is at issue in this case.”
Louisiana State has proposed putting posters of the Ten Commandments beside writings of US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Baden Ginsburg or the words from the musical Hamilton to find a compromise.
The filing says, “Whether public schools decide to hang displays of the Ten Commandments standing alone or, for instance, comparing the commandments to the musical Hamilton, has no bearing on Plaintiffs’ facial challenge under the First Amendment.”
“Regardless of variations in content, the minimum requirements of the Act demand permanent displays that all feature one unavoidable constant as their focus: a state-adopted, Protestant version of the Ten Commandments.”
They also dispute that the display of the Ten Commandments does coerce students in any way, as the Louisiana state claims.
“Defendants’ coercion argument suffers from the same fatal flaw as their other arguments: Defendants wrongly assume that the coercion analysis depends on the specific content of individual displays.”
It also added that it “will subject students, including the minor-child Plaintiffs, to a state-approved, Protestant version of the Ten Commandments in every classroom for every day of their public-school education.”
“The Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized that children are particularly susceptible to religious indoctrination at school, both because they are captive audiences to the state’s religious messages and because they are vulnerable to the immediate impressions and judgments of their teachers and classmates if they do not fall in line with the state’s preferred religious beliefs.”
Parents of various backgrounds launched the lawsuit in June, with the lead plaintiff being the Reverend Darcy Roake.
