Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry last week signed into law a bill that requires the display of the Ten Commandments in every public classroom in the state. The new law reignites the debate about the separation of church and state and will be challenged in court as a violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution.
Landry says he welcomes the fight. “I can’t wait to be sued,” he said. “If you want to respect the rule of law, you’ve got to start from the original law giver, which was Moses.”
The Governor is correct, since Moses received the Commandments from God on Mount Sinai, and those Commandments have undeniable historical and religious significance, and the courts have confirmed as much. In fact, Moses and the Ten Commandments are prominently displayed at the U.S. Supreme Court building.
However, the Supreme Court and a third grade classroom in Baton Rouge are not the same, and I’ll get to that in a minute.
The Louisiana law states that in 2005, the Supreme Court in Van Orden v. Perry recognized that it is permissible to display the Ten Commandments on government property. In that case it was a monument on the grounds of the Texas State Capitol. However, that is only part of the decision.
Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who wrote the opinion, also said, “There are, of course, limits to the display of religious messages or symbols. For example, we held unconstitutional a Kentucky statute requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments in every public schoolroom.”
So, the very court decision Louisiana lawmakers used to justify their bill, in fact, undermines their own argument. As Rehnquist wrote, “The placement of the Ten Commandments monument on the Texas State Capitol grounds is a far more passive use of those than was the case… where the text confronted elementary school students every day.”
To do so is proselytizing, and a violation of the Constitution.
What do Louisiana lawmakers expect will be gained from posting the Ten Commandments? State Representative Dodie Horton, a Republican sponsor of the bill, said, “Given all the junk our children are exposed to in classrooms today, it is imperative that we put the Ten Commandments back in a prominent position.”
Kids being kids, they’ll probably just ignore them. Teachers have a hard enough time getting children to focus on the daily lesson plans. But it does make me wonder how that third grade teacher is going to handle it when an inquisitive young student asks for an explanation of the tenth Commandment:
“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his cattle or anything that is thy neighbor’s.”*
A candid explanation about what it means for a man to covet his neighbor’s wife should be enough to land that teacher in hot water with parents for exposing children to age inappropriate material.
Maybe the Louisiana legislature can deal with that next session.
*(There are different wordings of the Commandments. The Louisiana law requires the language used in the Van Orden case.)