On Thursday, as legal experts debated how courts would view the Louisiana law, various religious leaders in the state expressed excitement and concern about what the Ten Commandments measure portends.
Lawyers for the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the ACLU said they plan to file a lawsuit next week against the new law.
“It is true that this Supreme Court has not been the best on church-state issues, but we believe this will be a bridge too far. Nothing they have said suggests that they would allow the Ten Commandments into every classroom, where students are a captive audience and must attend,” said Heather Weaver, attorney for the ACLU’s program on freedom of religion and belief.
Some outside experts on church-state law seemed less certain.
“Now we’re in somewhat uncharted territory,” said Michael Helfand, a professor specializing in religion and ethics at Pepperdine University Law School.
Efforts to infuse religion within government entities, including public schools, have intensified over the past decade, with the high court siding with those who want fewer restrictions on religion. State lawmakers, particularly in conservative areas, have introduced hundreds of bills aimed at adding everything from public school chaplains and “In God We Trust” signs in school entrances to public funding religious schools through vouchers.
The Louisiana law is part of a new series of measures stemming from a 2022 Supreme Court ruling in favor of a high school football coach whose contract was not renewed because of his prayers post-game on the 50-yard line. The decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District rejected the test used for more than 50 years to decide whether a law violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
The Lemon test, named after a 1971 Supreme Court ruling, asked questions such as: Does the law cause “excessive government entanglement with religion?” “” or “Does the law advance or inhibit religion?” In the football coach’s case, the Supreme Court said the Lemon test was no longer good law and that judges should instead look to “history and tradition.”
Noting that the Bremerton ruling found coach’s actions constitutional, ACLU’s Weaver said reasoning differs from Louisiana law because the court said his prayers were not “public” nor delivered to a “captive” audience.
“Regardless of the Lemon Test, there has always been an understanding in this country that the government could not favor one faith or religion over others. Here, not only does the state impose the Ten Commandments, but the law even states which version and presents the text,” Weaver said.
The law requires a particular Protestant text based on the King James Bible, which differs from the versions used by Catholics, Jews and others, let alone those used by other religions with their own faith texts.
Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of Freedom From Religion, said the new law goes “too far.”
“The religious right, Christian nationalists and their lawyers have been singing since the start of the war. Bremerton decision that somehow all precedent against religion in public schools has been overturned. That’s not the case,” she said. “The Supreme Court has been captured under Trump, but I hope it’s not ready to go that far.”
“There is no history of the Ten Commandments in our founding, in the Constitution, although many ignorant people might think it is there,” she said, calling the law “the antithesis of the Bill of Rights.
Pepperdine’s Helfand said it’s true that the Founding Fathers invoked the Bible and the Ten Commandments when America was born, but they still asked people to be able to worship or not worship as they pleased. The legal debate could now shift to the question of coercion, he said. When is someone forced to commit to a religion they do not adhere to? Could this include seeing the Ten Commandments on their classroom wall?
“You still can’t prefer one religion over another,” Helfand said.
John Inazu, an expert on religion and law at Washington University in St. Louis, noted that the Supreme Court that rejected a similar law in 1980 was operating under a different legal approach. The previous case, he wrote in an email, “was decided using a very different approach to the Establishment Clause.” Since then, the Supreme Court has focused on history, text and tradition. But it is not clear to me that Louisiana’s statute survives even in the most recent framework.
Putting this version of the Ten Commandments in classrooms is not a landmark or long-standing tradition, and it is “blatantly religious and monotheistic,” Inazu wrote.
He noted that the Supreme Court in 2005 upheld a Ten Commandments monument on the grounds of the Texas Capitol in Austin. However, he said, the monument is distinct from the Capitol itself, accompanied by an American flag and Star of David as well as the seal of the civic group that donated it. The court said the monument had a secular purpose and did not imply government endorsement of any religion.
Among the whirlwind of post-Bremerton The bills to promote religion in public schools were an effort last year in Texas to approve a Ten Commandments measure like Louisiana’s. It passed the state Senate but was not taken up by the House. But his supporters gave voice to Americans who see the Supreme Court as righting the American ship after half a century of erroneous separation of church and state.
“There is absolutely no separation between God and government, and that is the purpose of these bills. It was confusing; it’s not real,” Texas state Sen. Mayes Middleton (R), who co-sponsored the Texas bill, said last year.
One of the authors of the Louisiana law said the measure isn’t just about religion — and neither is the Ten Commandments.
“This is our fundamental law. Our sense of right and wrong is based on the Ten Commandments,” state Rep. Michael Bayham (R) told the Washington Post. He said he believed Moses was a historical figure and not just a religious one.
Those who oppose the new bills say they reflect a country which is tipping into a dangerous new phase in its balance between church and state, with those in power in some places seeking to to assert a version of Christian domination.
“Look, I love Jesus and the Scriptures, but this isn’t it. Raise a glass to Los Angeles by looking like a fool on the national stage,” the Rev. Michael Alello, a Catholic priest in Baton Rouge, posted Wednesday on X. “How much taxpayer money will wasted defending this measure in court, only to have this decision overturned?
But the Rev. Tony Spell, a Pentecostal pastor also from Baton Rouge, said the new law is an extension of his 2022 victory in the fight against pandemic restrictions in Louisiana’s highest court. Judges had dropped charges against him for leading religious gatherings despite confinement orders.
“We have a conservative court in Washington,” Spell said, “but really it’s about the people, the warriors, the fighters.”
Movements to integrate Christianity into all areas of life have only grown since his legal confrontation, he said. He now works with groups raising money for Ten Commandments posters that they hope will soon be displayed in classrooms across the state.
Asked what the new law would say to people who are not Christian or who do not subscribe to this version of the Ten Commandments, Spell replied: “Being offended is a choice. »
Mark Chancey, a professor at Southern Methodist University who studies the use of the Bible in public schools, said the Supreme Court has placed the country in a new era.
“It’s the Wild West when it comes to government-sponsored religion,” he said, adding, “It’s not clear how these things are going to play out.” »
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News Source : www.washingtonpost.com
