BATON ROUGE, La. — In your Breakdown, Governor Jeff Landry said he ‘couldn’t wait’ to be sued over a new law requiring the 10 commandments in Louisiana classrooms, and he didn’t have to wait long.
Just hours after it was signed, the ACLU of Louisiana, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation announced they would be filing a lawsuit to stop it.
The organizations say the law violates the First Amendment’s promise to separation of church and state, and it “will result in unconstitutional religious coercion of students, who are legally required to attend school and are thus a captive audience for school-sponsored religious messages.”
House Bill 71 makes Louisiana the only state in the nation to require all public schools, including colleges, to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom. The poster must be at least 11 by 14 inches, and the commandments must be the central focus and “printed in a large, easily readable font.”
The Author, Representative Dodie Horton, wrote that she sees the bill as a “huge victory.” She also wrote a bill last year that required all public school classrooms to display an “In God We Trust” poster.
The lawsuit hasn’t officially been filed yet, but Landry knew there would be challenges that would ring up the bill for taxpayers.
Tuesday night, at a GOP fundraiser in Tennessee, he said, “I’m going home to sign a bill that places the Ten Commandments in public classrooms, and I can’t wait to be sued.”
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