By passing a law requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments in classrooms, Louisiana has reignited a culture war over the role of religion in public schools that should have been resolved long ago. Supporters of the law, and potential copycat proposals in other states, might hope that a U.S. Supreme Court that recently blurred the separation between church and state would uphold this statute and repudiate its own precedents. The court must disabuse them of this fantasy.
Any culturally literate American should have heard of the Ten Commandments. That includes high school kids, although first graders might wonder what the adultery injunction is all about.
But presenting the Ten Commandments and other influential religious texts in age-appropriate lesson plans is very different from enshrining them in the classroom as Louisiana law does. Ignore protests that lawmakers only wanted to inform students about the historical role of the Ten Commandments; This law is a deliberately provocative act on the part of the Legislature that passed it and the governor who signed it.
The battle over religion in public schools is not new. Some segments of American society never accepted Supreme Court decisions in the 1960s that struck down officially prescribed prayers and Bible readings in public schools.
But Louisiana's new law should also be seen as part of a contemporary effort to infuse a specific kind of Christianity into American public institutions. That campaign is especially troubling at a time when the United States and its classrooms are so religiously diverse.
This religious campaign is alarmingly aligned with right-wing politics. Former President Trump, and future president, praised the Louisiana law and posted “I love the Ten Commandments.” Much of Trump's appeal is to white, Christian Americans who long for a real or imagined America that is monolithic in its beliefs.
The courts have been a bulwark against efforts to “Christianize” public education and other institutions supported by taxes paid by Americans of all faiths, or none. In 1980, the court struck down a Kentucky Ten Commandments law similar to Louisiana's as a violation of the First Amendment's ban on an “establishment of religion.” In 2005, judges also ruled that the publication of the Ten Commandments in Kentucky courts violated the First Amendment.
But recently the court's conservative majority has poked holes in what Thomas Jefferson called the “wall of separation” between church and state. For example, in 2022, judges ruled in favor of a high school football coach in Washington state who knelt and prayed on the field after games. In his majority opinion, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch said the court had abandoned a legal test he had long used to decide whether a government activity violated the ban on the “establishment of religion.”
The court's recent religion cases may lead supporters of the Louisiana law to think they can achieve a reversal of the court's long-standing refusal to allow public schools to inculcate religious beliefs. The language of the legislation suggests the state is on firm constitutional ground, citing a 2005 ruling in which the court upheld a Ten Commandments monument on the grounds of the state Capitol in Texas.
But as then-Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist noted in the case's leading opinion, the placement of the Ten Commandments monument was “a much more passive use of those texts” than their display in public schools “where the text “He faced those from primary school.” students every day.”
It is not clear that even this conservative Supreme Court would overturn a series of rulings against the propagation of religious teachings in public schools. But advocates of church-state separation are understandably concerned. After all, the court felt free to throw out an equally important line of precedent in its 2022 Dobbs abortion decision that overturned Roe v. Wade.
If the Louisiana law comes before it, the court should strike it down. There are many pulpits in which religious messages can be preached.
