Court clears way for Louisiana law requiring Ten Commandments in classrooms

A U.S. appeals court has cleared the way for a Louisiana law to take effect requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in poster format in public classrooms.

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals voted 12-6 to lift the hold a lower court first placed on the law in 2024. In the opinion released Friday, the court said it was too early to rule on the constitutionality of the law.

This is partly because it is not yet clear to what extent schools can display religious text, whether teachers will reference the Ten Commandments during lessons, or whether other items like the Mayflower Compact or the Declaration of Independence will also be displayed, according to the majority opinion.

Without that kind of detail, the panel decided it didn’t have enough information to assess what First Amendment issues might arise from the law. In other words, there are not enough facts available to “allow for judicial judgment rather than speculation,” the majority wrote in the opinion.

But the six justices who voted against the decision wrote a series of dissents, with some saying the case was ripe for judicial review and others saying the law exposes children to a government-sanctioned religion in a place they are required to be, posing a clear constitutional burden.

Circuit Judge James L. Dennis wrote that the law “is precisely the kind of establishment that the Framers anticipated and sought to prevent.”

The decision comes after the full court heard arguments in the cases in January 2026 following a ruling by the court’s three-judge panel that Louisiana’s law was unconstitutional. Arkansas also has a similar law that has been challenged in federal court.

The Texas law took effect September 1, marking the nation’s largest attempt to hang the Ten Commandments in public schools. Several school districts were unable to display them after federal judges issued injunctions in two cases that violated the law, but they have already gone up in many classrooms across the state, with districts paying to have the posters printed themselves or accepting donations.

The laws are part of efforts by Republicans, including President Donald Trump, to integrate religion into public school classrooms. Critics say it violates the separation of church and state, while supporters argue that the Ten Commandments are historical and part of the foundation of American law.

The laws have been challenged by families representing various religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Hinduism, as well as clergy, as well as non-religious families.

In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a similar Kentucky law violated the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which states that Congress may “make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The court found that the law had no secular objective but clearly served a religious objective.

And in 2005, the Supreme Court ruled that such displays at two Kentucky courthouses violated the Constitution. At the same time, the court upheld a Ten Commandments marker on the grounds of the Texas State Capitol in Austin.

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This story has been updated to correct the day of the week the decision was made, Friday, not Tuesday.