BATON ROUGE, La. (CN) — Religious leaders, teachers and parents whose children are in Louisiana public schools asked a federal judge on Monday to block a new state law that would require the Ten Commandments to be on display in every public school classroom statewide by Jan. 1, 2025.
Represented by several civil liberties groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Louisiana, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Freedom from Religion Foundation, the plaintiffs brought in Steven Green, a professor of law, religious studies and history at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon, as a witness in their bid for a preliminary injunction.
In implementing the law, the state has said its decision is based on the historical importance of the Ten Commandments in the foundations of the United States.
Green told U.S. District Judge John deGravelles Monday that after extensive historical review, he has been unable to find any evidence that the Ten Commandments are at the foundation of the American government and legal system.
In fact, Green said, basically the opposite is true.
The founding fathers Thomas Jefferson and James Madison wanted separation of church and state to ensure that people had freedom of consciousness and freedom of inquiry, and separation of church and state further guaranteed prevention of religious conflict and religious coercion, Green said.
Though attorneys for the state, including Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, argued that history is subjective, deGravelles declined the state’s request to drop Green’s witness statements from the record.
“He’s done what history professors do, but this case is really about the legal test for whether it violates the First Amendment or not, and I don’t think that what he said had really anything relevant for that question to the judge,” Murrill said in a press conference following the hearing.
State attorneys countered that elements of the Ten Commandments law — the text of which requires public K-12 classrooms and state-funded universities across the state to prominently display the Ten Commandments on poster-sized boards in their classrooms in a “large, easily readable font” — are still unknown.
The state says they can implement the ten commandments in schools in a way that doesn’t violate the constitutional separation of church and state.
“My job is to defend the laws that are passed by the legislature. I don’t stand in judgment of the policies of the legislature. My job is to presume that they are constitutional and defend them. I don’t have to agree with them. You know, I don’t have to like them. But I defend them. And this law, I believe, is constitutional, and we’ve illustrated it in numerous ways that the law is constitutional. We’ve shown that in our briefs by creating a number of posters. Again, you don’t have to like the posters. The point is you can make posters that comply with the constitution, ” Murrill said in the press conference.
They also argued it’s too early for the plaintiffs’ key witness to chime in on whether the law has a strong historical tradition in the U.S., as the defendants claim, and potentially too early for it to be blocked.
But Jonathan Youngwood — an attorney from New York’s Simpson Thatcher & Bartlett that is serving as pro bono counsel for the plaintiffs — told deGravelles that a tremendous amount is known in this case.
“That is the message,” Youngwood told deGravelles. “That is state establishment of religion.”
He added that if the judge doesn’t block the law the state is sure to enforce it.
The state said that the plaintiffs are not able to point to cases that say it is unlawful to display “religiously neutral” materials in schools.
But Youngwood argued that, far from being “religiously neutral,” placing the Ten Commandments in classrooms would be to indoctrinate students and in doing so would trample their parents’ rights.
The plaintiffs first challenged the law in a June lawsuit filed a week after Republican Governor Jeff Landry signed the law into effect.
The plaintiffs, all of whom have children in the Louisiana public school system, identify as Jewish, Christian, Unitarian Universalist and non-religious.
deGravelles did not indicate when or how he would decide on the matter, but the state asked deGravelles to grant a stay in the case if he planned to grant a preliminary injunction to the plaintiffs in order to streamline its already planned appeals process ahead of the bill.
“We can get out of your hands and your hair as quickly as we can on our way to the Fifth Circuit,” Benjamin Aguiñaga, the state’s solicitor general said.
If the law goes into effect, Louisiana, a Republican-led state inside the nation’s most religious areas, would become the first state in the nation to require mixing religion with public education.