The Ten Commandments clash is more political than spiritual — and will ultimately be futile

A Ten Commandments sculpture is on display in front of city hall June 27, 2001 in Grand Junction, Colorado.(Michael Smith/Getty Images)

Forces against the intrusion of religion into what should be faith-neutral spaces have taken a stand against Louisiana officials intent on placing displays of the Ten Commandments in every classroom from kindergarten through college. Both sides are equally convinced they will prevail in a dispute that could ultimately be settled before the nation’s highest court.

It might take months, if not years, before a final judgment is rendered in a lawsuit parents of nine Louisiana public school students filed this week to block the Ten Commandments mandate. That timeline has to appeal to Gov. Jeff Landry, who begged to be sued over the bill, and the ultra-conservative Louisiana Legislature’s Freedom Caucus, whose members pushed hardest for its approval. 

The longer the case is drawn out, the more political mileage they can gain from it. And all the while, it will distract from the fact that, at face value, religious dogma has absolutely no correlation to better educational or societal outcomes. 

It’s a gambit not without risk for far-right Republicans who feel legal precedent is on their side. But the uncertain nature of the conservative-heavy U.S. Supreme Court leaves the outcome far from certain. The same court that wiped out Roe v. Wade also intervened to maintain access to an abortion pill. Also, some of the same justices who decided bump stocks don’t factor into mass shootings also ruled that domestic abusers should lose their access to firearms. 

Lawyers for the parent plaintiffs also feel good about their chances of winning.  

“We are pushing back in the strongest terms against the increasingly egregious attempts by the government officials to demolish the wall of separation between church and state and to use our public schools as a means to convert children to Christianity,” attorney Heather Weaver said in a teleconference Monday. She leads the American Civil Liberties Union’s program on Freedom of Religion and Belief.

Weaver is among a cadre of attorneys representing parents who filed the federal lawsuit Monday in Baton Rouge against state Education Superintendent Cade Brumley and members of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. The ACLU, its Louisiana chapter, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Foundation for Freedom from Religion are representing the plaintiffs.

Louisiana will face lawsuit over Ten Commandments school displays

Proponents of the legislation that requires Ten Commandment displays in schools have pinned their hopes to a Supreme Court ruling from two years ago. In the case Kennedy v. Bremerton, conservative justices ruled that a Washington state football coach was exercising his First Amendment rights when he led a team prayer after games.      

Supporters of the new Ten Commandments law have stressed that the Kennedy decision did not rely on standards applied since the 1971 Supreme Court decision in Lemon v. Kurtzman. Known as the Lemon test, the principles have been used to determine whether policy violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which prohibits any law and government action from standing up an official state religion. 

Instead, conservative justices turned to a history of prior rulings on the Establishment Clause to interpret the intent of the Constitution’s authors for the Kennedy case. 

Plaintiffs attorneys in the Ten Commandments case insist a 1980 Supreme Court decision took the Lemon test out of play and bodes well for their lawsuit. In Stone v. Graham, justices ruled that a Kentucky state law mandated school displays of the Ten Commandments was unconstitutional. Patrick Elliott, an attorney for the Foundation for Freedom from Religion, pointed out that the Kennedy opinion cites multiple precedents that reinforce limits on religion in public schools.

Also, coach Joseph Kennedy did not formally organize his post-game prayer or require students to join him, Weaver said. This makes it a distinctly different scenario from Louisiana’s new Ten Commandments law.

“Kennedy was a very narrow decision,” she said. “They did uphold the coach’s right to engage in these prayers after football games. But the thing that they emphasized there was that the prayers … didn’t involve a captive audience. They weren’t in the classroom. The kids were wandering around, doing other things.”

The Louisiana lawsuit, Roake v. Brumley, has been assigned to U.S. District Judge John deGravelles, a federal court appointee of President Barack Obama to Louisiana’s Middle District Court in Baton Rouge. Plaintiffs’ attorneys will ask for an order to halt enforcement of the new state law before the upcoming school year, although the legislation doesn’t require schools to have Ten Commandments displays in place until Jan. 1. 

Proponents of placing the Ten Commandments in Louisiana’s schools have offered no real explanation for their need other than that they believe it’s the right thing to do. Their overtures have focused on morals and history, but there’s been no concrete path that connects the displays to better student performance or less crime. It makes it hard for anyone to come to their defense when the fingers of Christian nationalism point in their direction.

As the court battle plays out, the state’s more pressing matters won’t get near the same attention and are likely to persist and grow worse. Louisiana will continue to lag behind in education, and our correctional system will remain a higher priority. Plus, more critical social services that actually lift people from challenging situations will be slammed by the same politicians who so desperately want omnipresent religion, as long as it aligns with their own faith. 

Put another way, the classroom displays, if allowed to move forward, will do little to reinforce the tenets behind the Ten Commandments — to be the best person you can. Instead, what students will take away from the intrusive, out of context 11-x-17 posters is this: “Do better, because I said so.”

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