Last month, a federal judge in Louisiana put a hold on a recently passed state law that would post the Ten Commandments in public, private, magnet, and charter school classrooms there. Some mid-November headlines declared that the law was struck down— well, sort of. The Baton Rouge-based judge stayed the January 1, 2025 implementation of the law. The state’s attorney general immediately appealed the ruling, and another judge quickly stayed the first judge’s stay. As it stands, the situation is ongoing. Things are in limbo, and nobody thinks it’s over. Because these things never seem to be over.

This issue has been settled legally – though not culturally – for some time. The Stone v. Graham case, which was filed over a similar law in Kentucky, created the standard in 1980. A webpage on the case from the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State shares these basic facts: “The Kentucky law, adopted in 1978, was challenged by a group of parents and children representing different religions. The Kentucky courts upheld the law, but the Supreme Court reversed [the decision].” The fundamental finding was that the display had a religious, not a secular purpose. That was more than four decades ago.

Though it didn’t relate to schools or education, in the 1990s, this issue of religious symbolism in public spaces got a lot of attention via an Alabama judge named Roy Moore, who earned his claim-to-fame with displays of the Ten Commandments. The first time was in his Etowah County courtroom, then Moore rode that wave of attention into the Chief Justice job at the Alabama Supreme Court, where he placed a large stone monument of the Commandments in the lobby. In 2003, he was relieved of his position by a federal judge for refusing to remove that monument. For years afterward, Moore remained a highly visible and distinctly controversial figure in state and national politics, making unsuccessful attempts at becoming Alabama’s governor and its US senator. Though he was probably the most prominent modern Southern politician to have this issue as the basis for his career, he wasn’t the first, of course . . . and wouldn’t be the last.

A truck that circled the block and played messages on its loud speaker during the protests that followed the removal of Moore’s monument.

This time, we’ve got Louisiana’s House Bill 71, which states that it is to “provide  for the display of the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence, the Northwest Ordinance, and the Ten Commandments,” and further that “[i]ncluding the Ten Commandments in the education of our children is part of our state and national history, culture, and tradition.” Down a ways, we read about the bill’s requirements and its lack of a funding mandate, which is put like this: “The school boards are encouraged to use documents that are printed and made available to the schools free of charge.” Within its text, there are also brief explanations of US Supreme Court precedents and of historical examples of education materials that have included these Biblical rules, both of which the legislators believe underpin their efforts. 

In the current suit that has challenged the law, Rev. Roanoke v. Brumley, we find a ruling against multiple Louisiana state officials, who are named defendants: the superintendent of education, the board of education, and the attorney general among them. After a brief description of the case’s details, the judge disagrees with the state’s overriding arguments about historical and educational value being paramount, and he finds that the law breaks with the precedent created by Stone v. Graham. What was particularly interesting to me was a remark that the translation of Ten Commandments that is mandated by the law is “a specific Protestant version of the Ten Commandments contained in the King James Bible, as opposed to a Roman Catholic or Jewish version.” Though the statistical data says that more than half of the people in Louisiana are Protestant Christians, there is a significant Catholic minority there. (Yet, that doesn’t even address the state’s non-Christians, whose potential objections should seem obvious.)

Thinking about the beliefs, myths, and narratives that lead to these efforts, it seems valid to assume that some Christians want for their beliefs to be enshrined as law. It’s difficult to make the argument that “some people don’t believe the way you do” to a person whose response will be: Well, they ought to. Notwithstanding the separation of Church and State, these kinds of laws also beg the question of penalties: what will happen to someone who violates them— loss of employment, civil litigation, criminal prosecution? If laws like this one have a penalty, then our government takes on features of a theocracy.

Other unanswered questions, which involved beliefs and narratives, center on the purpose of the bill’s actions in serving the goals of public administration. For example, speed limits on the roads are for traffic safety, and inspections in restaurants are for food quality and public health. The text of the bill explains that students should “understand and appreciate” these “documents,” yet there is no discussion of lesson plans or activities that would lead students to understanding or appreciation. It also states that the Ten Commandments are historical, that they have been in textbooks like the McGuffey Reader, and that the Supreme Court has upheld their display . . . I haven’t fact-checked those assertions but will assume they are true and correct. All that establishes is that the four documents are indeed real and have been a part of our culture in the past. It doesn’t address why students need to see the Ten Commandments on a poster in a school. If the raison d’être of the law is secular, this law as it’s written doesn’t bear out the educational goal of displaying this content. 

My final thought in this rumination regards consistency in one’s principles. Politically conservative Americans, like the ones who’ve supported and passed this Louisiana bill, typically declare beliefs in “small government,” fiscal responsibility, and less interference. The multiple actions required to enact this law seem like “big government” to me. Real people, employed and paid by state and local governments, will have to communicate with every district and school, obtain the displays, distribute the displays, and post the displays in every classroom— this will be no small feat and will require a capable bureaucracy. Moreover, the state is probably paying its lawyers with taxpayer dollars to handle the court case, its appeals, and its possible route to the US Supreme Court without stating a clear reason in the bill what this action accomplishes. About the third issue, this effort doesn’t seem like less government interference. It seems like more. Far more. The Ten Commandments can easily be found in Bibles, which most Christian families already have, and on websites, which could be found through simple web searches. So it’s not like The Ten Commandments are hard to find, as though school children in Louisiana will not encounter them if the state legislature didn’t pass this law. It is unlikely that their children will be walking around and saying, The Ten what? Never heard of ’em.

Even if this bill’s proponents and supporters take their case all the way to the US Supreme Court and win, opening the door to post Ten Commandments posters all over everywhere, it will only be a symbolic victory. The posters by themselves aren’t going to turn all, or even most, children into devout Christians. The posters also won’t raise test scores or increase workplace readiness. They won’t end child poverty or eliminate hunger. They won’t reduce dress code violations or stop kids from littering. The children who would have ignored them in the first place will ignore them in the classrooms, and the children who already knew the Ten Commandments will think, I know what those are. 

Christian beliefs and values must live in the heart, in the mind, in the soul. After they’re there, then they come out through the actions, the behaviors, the way of life. Simply posting a list of the Ten Commandments on classroom walls – take this from a long-time classroom teacher – will accomplish very, very little. All I see is an effort to advance a narrative prevalent in Southern culture: that Christian ideas and documents are the foundation of America.