by Sharon Rondeau
(Jun. 21, 2024) — In response to a new Louisiana law mandating the posting of the Ten Commandments in public schools by January 1 next year, 2024 Republican presumptive nominee Donald J. Trump opined on TruthSocial that he approves of the measure “in public schools, private schools and many other places, for that matter.”
He further suggested the law could be “the first major step in the revival of religion, which is desperately needed, in our country.”
The Ten Commandments appear in the Old Testament book of Exodus, the second book of 66 and attributed to Moses.
In the fifth book, Deuteronomy, Moses repeats the Commandments with the exhortation, “Hear, Israel, the decrees and laws I declare in your hearing today. Learn them and be sure to follow them. 2 The Lord our God made a covenant with us at Horeb. 3 It was not with our ancestors[a] that the Lord made this covenant, but with us, with all of us who are alive here today. 4 The Lord spoke to you face to face out of the fire on the mountain. 5 (At that time I stood between the Lord and you to declare to you the word of the Lord, because you were afraid of the fire and did not go up the mountain.)…”
The first five books of the Old Testament are known as the Torah in Judaism and comprise a section of the Hebrew Bible; the Christian Bible contains the Old Testament and New Testament, with different denominations recognizing differing numbers of books.
The Commandments appear in the King James Bible version as:
2 I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;
6 And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.
7 Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
8 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
9 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:
10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:
11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.
12 Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.
13 Thou shalt not kill.
14 Thou shalt not commit adultery.
15 Thou shalt not steal.
16 Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
17 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.
According to Pastor Mark Burns, a Trump supporter and primary candidate for Congress from South Carolina, Trump “is a good Christian.”
While speaking at a Republican Party Statesmen’s Dinner in Tennessee days before signing the law, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry told attendees he “can’t wait to be sued” over it.
Landry most recently served two terms as the state’s attorney general. Early in the last decade, he served one term in Congress from the third district, failing to win re-election after redistricting. He was a member of the Louisiana National Guard member for 11 years.
Describing Louisiana as a “red” state politically, the AP reported Friday:
Louisiana has long been reliably red. The Bayou State has voted for the Republican candidate in every presidential election since 2000, with residents overwhelmingly supporting Donald Trump during the past two, and the GOP has held a majority in the statehouse for years.
But policies in the state have veered even further right under the leadership of Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, who has carried out a sweeping conservative agenda in just six months on the job. This week he signed the nation’s first law requiring that the Ten Commandments be posted in every public classroom. He enacted a new law classifying abortion pills as dangerous controlled substances. He has voiced support for a bill on his desk calling for a Texas-style immigration crackdown that could allow law enforcement to arrest and jail migrants who enter the U.S. illegally.
“Louisiana has become the first state to require that the Ten Commandments be displayed in every public school classroom,” an AP caption reads below a photo of workers removing a Ten Commandments monument outside a high school in Ohio in an article published Thursday.
Fox News also claimed Louisiana to be the “first state” to pass such a law. However, the Commonwealth of Kentucky passed a similar law which in 1980 was declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Stone v. Graham. The content was “plainly religious in nature” and served “no secular legislative purpose,” an element the court said in its per curiam (unsigned) decision was necessary to be constitutionally sound.
The Louisiana bill, HB71, characterizes the Commandments as one of several “historical documents” on the same level as the Mayflower Compact, Declaration of Independence and Northwest Ordinance and invoked the 2005 U.S. Supreme Court opinion in Van Orden v. Perry, 545 U.S. 677, 688.
Legislators also referred to an earlier state law involving the public display of the Ten Commandments which remains in place today.
(2) In 2006, the legislature enacted Act No. 602 of the 2006 Regular Session of the legislature which provided for the secretary of state to publish the Ten Commandments and other historically significant documents for posting in court houses and other public buildings to address “a need to educate and inform the public as to the history and background of American and Louisiana law.”
“(6) The text of the Ten Commandments set forth in Subsection B of this Section is identical to the text of the Ten Commandments monument that was upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States in Van Orden v. Perry, 545 U.S. 677, 688 (2005),” the bill additionally states.
Van Orden, filed against then-Texas Gov. Rick Perry, resulted in the high court upholding the decision of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that the presence of a monument inscribed with the Commandments outside the Texas State Capitol did not violate the “Establishment Clause” of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment.
In an interview with Fox News’s Sandra Smith shortly after 2:00 p.m. EDT Friday, Landry defended the bill by stating the Ten Commandments provided the foundation for the Judeo-Christian tradition, long considered to be the backbone of U.S. “law.”
In the Supreme Court’s opinion in Van Orden, then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote for the majority:
In this case we are faced with a display of the Ten Commandments on government property outside the Texas State Capitol. Such acknowledgments of the role played by the Ten Commandments in our Nation’s heritage are common throughout America. We need only look within our own Courtroom. Since 1935, Moses has stood, holding two tablets that reveal portions of the Ten Commandments written in Hebrew, among other lawgivers in the south frieze. Representations of the Ten Commandments adorn the metal gates lining the north and south sides of the Courtroom as well as the doors leading into the Courtroom. Moses also sits on the exterior east facade of the building holding the Ten Commandments tablets…
Of course, the Ten Commandments are religious—they were so viewed at their inception and so remain. The monument, therefore, has religious significance. According to Judeo-Christian belief, the Ten Commandments were given to Moses by God on Mt. Sinai. But Moses was a lawgiver as well as a religious leader. And the Ten Commandments have an undeniable historical meaning, as the foregoing examples demonstrate. Simply having religious content or promoting a message consistent with a religious doctrine does not run afoul of the Establishment Clause. See Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U. S., at 680, 687; Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U. S., at 792; McGowan v. Maryland, supra, at 437–440; Walz v. Tax Comm’n of City of New York,397 U. S. 664, 676–678 (1970). There are, of course, limits to the display of religious messages or symbols. For example, we held unconstitutional a Kentucky statute requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments in every public schoolroom. Stone v. Graham,449 U. S. 39 (1980) (per curiam). In the classroom context, we found that the Kentucky statute had an improper and plainly religious purpose…
The placement of the Ten Commandments monument on the Texas State Capitol grounds is a far more passive use of those texts than was the case in Stone, where the text confronted elementary school students every day. Indeed, Van Orden, the petitioner here, apparently walked by the monument for a number of years before bringing this lawsuit. The monument is therefore also quite different from the prayers involved in Schempp and Lee v. Weisman. Texas has treated her Capitol grounds monuments as representing the several strands in the State’s political and legal history. The inclusion of the Ten Commandments monument in this group has a dual significance, partaking of both religion and government. We cannot say that Texas’ display of this monument violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed.
It is so ordered.
Private donations are to be used to purchase the posters required by the law to be mounted in all public classrooms.
Several organizations, including the state chapter of the ACLU, have already pledged to sue over the new law.
Note to the ACLU: Thou shalt not kill or Thou shalt not murder (depending upon which bible version you read) is just as applicable to members of the ACLU as it is to non-members.