The new law requiring public classrooms to display the Ten Commandments is already facing a legal challenge. Loyola University Law professor Dane Ciolino said while it violates the First Amendment; the bill was written to display them for historical not religious purposes.
“You can bet that the Attorney General and the Governor are going to make every effort to get the court to overturn the 1980 Kentucky decision based on this new approach to evaluating statutes under the establishment clause,” said Ciolino.
In 1980 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled a similar law in Kentucky was unconstitutional, but in 2022, Ciolino said the high court ruled in favor of a high school football coach in Washington who prayed with students on the field on the basis of history and tradition.
“So, the argument from the Attorney General will be that there is a long history in tradition that goes back to the 19th and early 20th centuries that permitted public schools to display the Ten Commandments,” said Ciolino.
Ciolino expects the law to be deemed unconstitutional and that Governor Jeff Landry and Attorney General Liz Murril will appeal it to the U.S. Supreme Court, which is more conservative than in the past.
“Only the Supreme Court can overturn its own prior precedent and that’s exactly what the Governor and Attorney General are hoping they will do when the case eventually gets to the U.S. Supreme Court in two to three years,” said Ciolino.
The ACLU, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom from Religion Foundation plan to file a joint lawsuit against the measure.
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