Louisiana classrooms are given the green light by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to put up Ten Commandments posters. This, after the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a three-judge panel’s earlier decision that found the state law requiring those classroom displays to be unconstitutional. Loyola University law professor Dane Ciolino says the full Fifth Circuit did not overturn the ruling; it instead said it was too soon for it to rule on whether it is or not.
“That’s a basic Article III principle that federal courts only decide concrete disputes, not constitutional questions in the abstract,” Ciolino explained.
Ciolino says there are many unanswered questions about the Ten Commandments posters that prevent the judges from determining whether they meet constitutional muster.
“How are these Ten Commandments displays going to look and work in practice? How prominent are they? What other materials are going to be posted along with them? How are teachers going to use them?” Ciolino asked.
Ciolino says he expects the case to end up right back in the full Fifth Circuit within the next six to 12 months, and it will in almost all certainty ultimately end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.
The ACLU says the displaying of the Ten Commandments in public classrooms violates the separation of church and state, as the civil liberties group says public schools exist to educate, not indoctrinate.
But Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill says don’t’ kill or steal should not be controversial. She says her office has issued clear guidance to our public schools on how to comply with the law, and we have created multiple examples of posters demonstrating how it can be applied constitutionally. Louisiana public schools should follow the law.
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