Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman (Kentucky Lantern photo by Mathew Mueller)
Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman and other Republican attorneys general from 17 states are signaling their support for a Louisiana law being challenged in federal court that requires displays of the Ten Commandments in Louisiana classrooms.
Coleman and attorneys general from 17 other states filed an amicus brief Tuesday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit arguing that Louisiana’s law should not be blocked by a legal precedent set when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a similar Kentucky law in 1980. A federal judge had blocked the law from being implemented last month.
Coleman in a statement said he was proud to support Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill “in the effort to preserve our shared history and educate future generations.”
“From our founding documents to the establishment of the rule of law in the United States, the Ten Commandments’ influence on American history is undeniable,” Coleman said.
U.S. District Judge John deGravelles of Louisiana’s Middle District Court wrote last month in his decision to block the Ten Commandments law that the plaintiffs challenging the law would likely prevail, saying the law is coercive because parents are required to make sure their children attend school.
DeGravelles in his decision relied on a precedent set in Stone v. Graham, which involved the U.S. Supreme Court striking down a similar Kentucky law. That law, which is still in Kentucky Revised Statutes, was passed by a Democratic state lawmaker from Louisville in 1978 and required the display of a “durable, permanent copy” of the Ten Commandments on walls in elementary and secondary schools. The plaintiffs challenging the law, which include people who are Jewish, Christian, Unitarian Universalist and non-religious, argue Louisiana’s law violates that precedent.
But Coleman and other attorneys general in their brief wrote that precedent doesn’t apply to Louisiana’s law in part because of differences between Louisiana’s law and the Kentucky law that was struck down, arguing Stone v. Graham should be narrowly interpreted. The attorneys general also argue the Ten Commandments have been acknowledged in various fashions in other government buildings.
“Louisiana’s law is by no means a carbon copy of the law in Stone, especially in the context of this facial challenge,” the attorneys general wrote. “Most importantly, unlike Kentucky’s statute, Louisiana’s law expressly gives school officials discretion in fashioning the ‘nature of the display.’”
In defending the law’s flexibility, Murrill had showcased examples of posters featuring the Ten Commandments that she believed could comply with the law including those that had pictures and quotes from Broadway actor Lin-Manuel Miranda, former Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Martin Luther King Jr., and U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson.
But lawyers for the plaintiffs previously argued that their clients including Catholic and Jewish families shouldn’t be required to look at Protestant scripture. Lawyers for the state didn’t refute the claim that the Ten Commandments displays were Protestant scripture derived from the King James Version of the Bible, differing from Catholic and Jewish scripture.