Louisiana became the first state in more than forty years to require public schools and universities to display the Ten Commandments. Under the new statute, by January 1, 2025, a framed display at least eleven by fourteen inches in size with “large, easily readable font” must be on display in every public school building and classroom, from kindergarten to college.
State representative Dodie Horton sponsored the bill with the motivation to “Get God’s moral standard back in front of our children, because right now, they don’t seem to have a standard.” Rather than celebrate the potential for good among the youth, Horton reports that she has “never known this level of evil attacks” from civil rights groups and the political left. Christians everywhere should be praying for future favorable court rulings related to the lawsuits this legislation has generated.
Will this law be allowed to stand?
The US Supreme Court, in its 1980 decision (Stone v. Graham, 449 U.S. 39) said, in part,
The preeminent purpose of posting the Ten Commandments, which do not confine themselves to arguably secular matters, is plainly religious in nature, and the posting serves no constitutional educational function… [as would be allowed for studying the Bible for “history, civilization, ethics, comparative religion, or the like”]…. If the posted copies of the Ten Commandments are to have any effect at all, it will be to induce the schoolchildren to read, meditate upon, perhaps to venerate and obey, the Commandments. However desirable this might be as a matter of private devotion, it is not a permissible state objective under the Establishment Clause.
Source: “Thou shalt put them on display,” World Magazine, Aug. 2024, pp. 110-111.
Online record of Supreme Court cases, Stone v. Graham, 449 U.S. 39 (1980), https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/449/39/, accessed 9/24/2024.
