Louisiana Families Urge Federal Court to Block State Law Mandating Ten Commandments Displays in All Public School Classrooms
BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA — Representatives for nine multi-faith Louisiana families today urged the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana to block H.B. 71, a new state law requiring all public elementary, secondary, and postsecondary schools to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom. The families, who all have children in Louisiana public schools, are plaintiffs in the lawsuit Rev. Roake v. Brumley.
The organizations representing the families – the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Louisiana, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Freedom From Religion Foundation, with Simpson Thacher Bartlett LLP serving as pro bono counsel – issued the following statement:
“Our lawsuit is necessary to protect the religious freedom of all Louisiana public schoolchildren and their families. This law is a transparent attempt to pressure public-school students to convert to the state’s preferred brand of Christianity. Today we urged the court to block H.B. 71 from being implemented because it violates the Constitution’s promise of religious freedom and church-state separation. Public schools are not Sunday schools. Parents and children – not politicians or school officials – should get to decide if, when and how to engage with religion.”
Rev. Roake v. Brumley was filed on June 24, after Gov. Jeff Landry signed H.B. 71 into law. On July 8, the families asked the court to issue an order that blocks the defendants from posting the Ten Commandments in public schools or taking any other action to carry out the law while the lawsuit is pending.
Families represented in the lawsuit include: Unitarian Universalist minister, the Rev. Darcy Roake, her husband Adrian Van Young, and their two children; the Rev. Jeff Simms, a Presbyterian (U.S.A.) minister, and his three children; nonreligious parents Jennifer Harding and Benjamin Owens and their child; Erin and David Hawley and their two children – a Unitarian Universalist family; Dustin McCrory, an atheist, and his three children; Christy Alkire, who is nonreligious, and her child; and Joshua Herlands, who is Jewish and has two elementary-age children.
The lawsuit asserts that H.B. 71 violates longstanding U.S. Supreme Court precedent and the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment. The law “substantially interferes with and burdens” parents’ First Amendment right to direct their children’s religious education and upbringing. By approving and mandating the display of a specific version of the Ten Commandments, the law also runs afoul of the First Amendment’s prohibition against the government taking sides in theological debates. The mandated Ten Commandments displays also are unconstitutionally coercive, pressuring students to venerate the state’s favored religious scripture while sending a harmful and religiously divisive message to students who do not subscribe to this version of the Ten Commandments that they do not belong in their own schools.
