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Louisiana begs to be sued for forcing Ten Commandments on kids [1]

['Daily Kos Staff']

Date: 2024-06-20  

Louisiana became the first state to require the display of the Ten Commandments in every classroom as Gov. Jeff Landry signed a sweeping education bill on Wednesday. The bill, which also removes requirements for COVID-19 vaccinations and limits schools’ authority to require any other vaccinations, seems tailor-made to generate a string of lawsuits as state legislators place performative politics ahead of children’s education.

The Ten Commandments requirement is definitely the part of the bill that’s generating the most attention. As The Washington Post reports, Landry declared that “if you want to respect the rule of law, you’ve got to start from the original lawgiver, which was Moses.”

It’s a deliberate attempt to challenge the Constitution and force one specific religion into public schools.

Landry knows exactly what he’s doing. As the Nashville Tennessean reported, Landry was a speaker at a GOP fundraiser in Tennessee on Friday.

“I’m going home to sign a bill that places the Ten Commandments in public classrooms,” he said at that meeting. “And I can’t wait to be sued.”

There’s no doubt he will be. Four civil liberties organizations have already filed lawsuits.

Proponents of the law believe that they have found a clever way around the separation of church and state because the legislation doesn’t allocate any funds to purchase Ten Commandments posters or plaques. It only requires that the list be posted, counting on churches and other groups to “volunteer” copies.

As the GOP becomes more and more focused on delivering the demands of a Christian nationalist movement, eradicating the line between church and state has become a higher priority. In the past year, a dozen states have introduced legislation that would place chaplains in public schools. Supreme Court decisions, including the overturning of Roe v. Wade have energized radicals behind this movement.

While it is unlikely that a bill mandating the display of the Ten Commandments could survive any challenge before a reasonable court, this Supreme Court has already demonstrated that it is not reasonable. The potential of the current Supreme Court finding some way to ignore the Constitution and allow this to stand is, sadly enough, not out of the question.

In a 2022 ruling, the Supreme Court backed a high school football coach who was making his team pray after games. Louisiana might actually win this thing.

And if Republicans in Louisiana and other states blow a few million dollars of their education funds while beating their chests about an issue that appeals only to white Christian nationalists, they’re fine with that.

What’s more immediately concerning is that the attention given to the Ten Commandments part of this legislation is preventing a closer look at the total package of legislation that Landry signed. That package includes more money for private schools, eliminating vaccination requirements, weakening teacher standards, and eliminating preferred pronouns. It also gives power over school curricula to a new state board that can determine what and how teachers are allowed to teach.

Of the Ten Commandments, only four concern anything that might be considered instruction on civil affairs: Don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t lie, and don’t commit adultery. At least one of those is, hopefully, not a big concern to K-12 students. Two other commandments—don’t be jealous of the things that aren’t yours and respect your parents—might be considered moral instruction.

But all of the others concern matters that are completely and unambiguously religious in nature.

Regarding claims about the “original lawgiver,” someone might want to inform Landry about Hammurabi or Ur-Nammu. Not only do these expansive lists of laws predate any version of the Ten Commandments, but those ancient vengeance- and retribution-based legal systems would likely appeal to Republicans.

Of course, the intention of putting the Ten Commandments in every classroom from kindergarten through college doesn’t have anything to do with education. And it’s certainly not about respecting the rule of law.

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