Louisiana became the first U.S. state to mandate that every public school classroom through college display a poster of the Ten Commandments.
The Republican-backed measure signed into law Wednesday by Gov. Jeff Landry describes the commandments as “the foundational documents of our state and national government.”
The law is expected to be challenged by civil rights groups, who say it violates the separation of church and state enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the so-called Establishment Clause.
It says: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. »
State law requires that a poster include the sacred text in “large, easily readable print” on an 11-by-14-inch (28 cm by 35.5 cm) poster and that the commandments be “the focal point” of the display.
It will also be presented alongside a four-paragraph “contextual statement” that will describe how the commandments “have been an important part of American public education for nearly three centuries.”
The posters are to be displayed in all publicly funded classrooms by 2025 – but no public funding is proposed to fund the posters themselves.
Similar laws have recently been proposed by other Republican-led states, including Texas, Oklahoma and Utah.
There have been numerous legal battles over the display of the Ten Commandments in public buildings, including schools, courthouses, and police stations.
In 1980, the United States Supreme Court struck down a similar Kentucky law requiring the document to be displayed in elementary and secondary schools.
By a vote of 5 to 4, the high court ruled that the requirement to display the Ten Commandments “had no secular legislative purpose” and was “clearly religious in nature.”
The court noted that in addition to criminal cases like murder and theft, the Ten Commandments also referred to worshiping God, including observing the Sabbath day.
