Thou shall not display the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms

Photo via Reuters

AARON POLLOCK: It is rare to hear a governor beg for a lawsuit, but Governor Jeff Landry of Louisiana recently got exactly what he asked for in response to the Louisiana Ten Commandments bill. The new law requires that every classroom in the state display an 11x14 copy of the moral law, or larger if the district feels particularly eager to disregard the first amendment. 

The Washington Post believes that the case against the Louisiana Ten Commandments bill, Roake v. Brumley, could “set up a new Supreme Court battle.” The Louisiana case is similar to other currently ongoing cases in Texas and Arkansas. Early victories do not ensure future success before the Roberts Court, which may answer the substantive question however it pleases. 

Luckily, Ten Commandments bills are already failing on the merits in courts across the country. Since Governor Landry signed the statewide bill mandating that a government-approved 11x14 copy of the Ten Commandments be displayed in every public school classroom, the ACLU has obtained an injunction from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals enjoining the bill. 

Lawyers for the state of Louisiana have argued on appeal to the Supreme Court that the standard for determining whether Ten Commandments Bills violate the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause should be coercion instead of state endorsement. The standard of coercion rises above mere personal offense to religious imagery, only striking down laws that compel people to affirm a certain faith. 

The state endorsement test critiques whether a law conveys that the state favors or prefers one religion above others. The appellant in Roake v. Brumley does not favor the endorsement test because it concerns itself with civil liberties, and less so the intent of the founding fathers when writing the Constitution.

The plaintiffs in this case, parents suing on behalf of their children, are more than simply offended. When signing the new law, Governor Landry claimed that no child can respect secular law without giving respect to the “original lawgiver,” namely, Moses. Children are a captive audience who cannot avoid daily and state-mandated religious material. If a child in Louisiana takes issue with the poster on a classroom wall and objects, their governor has already called them disobedient. 

I could only speculate that Governor Landry worries more about his potential defeat in court than any victory, but a victory in this case would be a sure disaster. Successfully defending the Ten Commandments bill would upend religious freedom in America as we have known it for 80 years. Our right to individual conscience would be subject to legislative power and electoral politics, something that nobody – not even Christian nationalists – truly wants. 

After all, the Ten Commandments themselves are a subject of creativity. There is an old YouTube video of Christopher Hitchens, the late atheist and polemicist, crafting his own Ten Commandments. Viewers simply cannot help but wonder what their own list of Ten Commandments would be if only they were in the shoes of Hitchens or Moses. Our obsession with finding rules to which no person could reasonably object reflects the very human subjectivity that the First Amendment protects. 

Christian nationalists would do well to remember that the Golden Rule, to do unto others as you would do unto yourself, originates from the Bible itself. The bold proclamation is first heard in Matthew and later echoed in Luke, and it can be heard nowhere in the Louisiana Ten Commandments law. 

Imagine if Louisiana elected a slate of illiberal atheists to the state legislature instead of Christian nationalists. The state could just as easily plaster Hitchen’s Ten Commandments on every classroom wall. The last Hitchens commandment would be a non-starter for many fundamentalist parents – it calls for us all to disavow any faith tradition that is not feminist, anti-racist and queer-affirming. 

A special pleading in favor of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms may be made in response. Since the founding fathers were – disputedly – Christians, America must remain a Christian nation today. The Louisiana bill offers for school districts to display the Ten Commandments alongside the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. The place for the Ten Commandments in the classroom could be reconsidered as a historical, not theological, element.

If the sole intent of Ten Commandments bill authors were to acknowledge that the Framers were – disputedly – in line with Christian thought, they need not build shrines in classrooms. History and theology can be separate lessons, so passing reference to the Christian moral codes would suffice. Such history remains important to secularists as well, since their faith adds context to the absence of a national religion in the Constitution, our founding document. 

Simply seeing the Ten Commandments poses no moral threat on its own. But when the decalogue becomes a cudgel against a sect of its own people, it should cause great concern. 

Aaron Pollock is an On The Record columnist. He is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences studying government, theology and journalism. He calls Holmdel, New Jersey home, and he hopes to go into public interest law following graduation.