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A federal appeals court cleared the way on Friday for a controversial Louisiana law requiring poster-sized displays of the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom, allowing the state to enforce a law that was previously found to be unconstitutional.
The US fifth circuit court of appeals voted 12-6 to lift a preliminary injunction on the law after most the judges found that it was premature to decide on the law’s constitutionality, as it had not gone into effect.
The majority wrote in the opinion that there aren’t enough facts available to “permit judicial judgment rather than speculation”, partly because it isn’t yet clear how prominently schools may display the religious text, if teachers will refer to the Ten Commandments during classes, or if other texts like the Mayflower Compact or the Declaration of Independence will also be displayed.
The court had decided to reconsider the case with all judges present after three of them ruled in June that the law was unconstitutional.
In 2024, Louisiana became the first state to require the display of the Ten Commandments, igniting fierce debate over religious freedoms in schools and the separation of church and state.
In the lawsuit filed in 2024 by parents of Louisiana schoolchildren from multi-faith backgrounds, they argued that the law violates language in the US constitution’s first amendment guaranteeing religious liberty and forbidding the government establishment of religion. Proponents of the law argue that the Ten Commandments are historical and part of the foundation of US law.
In a concurring opinion, circuit judge James Ho, a Trump appointee, wrote that the law “is not just constitutional – it affirms our nation’s highest and most noble traditions”.
Some of the six judges who dissented argued that the law exposes children to government-endorsed religion in a place they are required to be, presenting a clear constitutional burden.
Circuit judge James L Dennis, a Clinton appointee, wrote that that “is precisely the kind of establishment the Framers anticipated and sought to prevent”.
The decision was not unexpected. The fifth circuit – covering federal appeals from Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas – is one of the most conservative federal appellate courts in the country and is known for propelling Republican policies to the similarly conservative US supreme court.
Louisiana’s Republican governor, Jeff Landry, a staunch Trump ally, praised the court’s decision, writing on Facebook on Friday: “Common sense is making a comeback!”
The state’s attorney general, Liz Murrill, said after the ruling that Louisiana schools should “follow the law” and that she had sent out several correct examples of the required poster.
Under the law, the Ten Commandments must be displayed “at a minimum … on a poster or framed document that is at least eleven inches by fourteen inches” in each classroom of every public elementary, middle and high school, as well as public college and university classrooms. The text must be the “central focus” and must be printed “in a large, easily readable font”.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation, a group involved in the legal challenge, called the ruling “extremely disappointing” and said the law will force families “into a game of constitutional whack-a-mole”, where they will have to separately challenge each school district’s displays.
The ACLU of Louisiana called the decision “disgraceful and deeply harmful” and vowed to press ahead in pursuit of further legal challenges to block the law.
“This decision is wrong. It is cowardly. And it carries real consequences for our children,” said the organization’s executive director, Alanah Odoms, in a statement on Friday. “By forcing a singular religious text onto the walls of our public schools, the fifth circuit has flung open the door to the religious coercion of Louisiana’s children. This law transforms the public school classroom, a place that should be safe and inclusive, into a government-sanctioned house of worship.”
Odoms went on: “Louisiana schools are not Sunday schools. Teachers are not pastors. And the state has no business inserting itself between parents, their children, and matters of faith and conscience. That principle is as old as the republic itself, and no appellate court gets to erase it.”
Similar laws have been challenged in court. A group of Arkansas families filed a federal lawsuit last year challenging a near-identical law passed in their state, and lawmakers in Texas passed a similar law requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in classrooms.
The fifth circuit heard arguments on the constitutionality of both the Texas and the Louisiana laws last month, though Friday’s decision does not apply to the law in Texas, where posters have already gone up in many classrooms across the state as districts paid to have them printed themselves or accepted donations.
In 1980, the US supreme court ruled that a similar Kentucky law violated the establishment clause of the US constitution, which says Congress can “make no law respecting an establishment of religion”. The court found that the law had “no secular purpose” but was “plainly religious in nature”.
And in 2005, the supreme court held that such displays in a pair of Kentucky courthouses violated the US constitution. At the same time, the court upheld a Ten Commandments marker on the grounds of the Texas state capitol in Austin.
