Louisiana governor signs Bill requiring display of Ten Commandments in classrooms

LOUISIANA - Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry on June 19 signed into law a Bill that makes the state the only one in the US to require displaying the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom.

He signed the Bill along with a package of others that he said were designed to “expand faith in public schools”.

“If you want to respect the rule of law, you’ve got to start from the original law-giver, which was Moses,” Mr Landry said at the signing ceremony.

In the Christian and Jewish faiths, God revealed the Ten Commandments to Hebrew prophet Moses.

Other measures would authorise the hiring of chaplains in schools, restrict teachers from mentioning sexual orientation or gender identity, and prevent schools from using a transgender student’s preferred name or pronouns unless granted permission by parents.

Mr Landry also signed Bills that would expand tutoring for underperforming students, help improve mathematics skills, and impose fewer curriculum mandates on teachers.

Civil rights group the American Civil Liberties Union and its Louisiana chapter, along with Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Freedom from Religion Foundation, announced that they would file a lawsuit to challenge the law requiring that a specific text of the Ten Commandments be prominently displayed in all classrooms.

No other state has such a law, the groups said in a statement.

“Politicians have no business imposing their preferred religious doctrine on students and families in public schools,” the statement said.

The First Amendment of the US Constitution prohibits the government from the “establishment of religion”, and in 1980 the US Supreme Court ruled in Stone versus Graham that a Kentucky law on the posting of the Ten Commandments in school was unconstitutional. REUTERS