Appeals court strikes down Louisiana’s problematic Ten Commandments law
The ruling is an important victory for Establishment Clause principles in the public school context, where advocates of Christian nationalism have sought to advance a narrow religious agenda and promote a false historical narrative.
By BJC Staff
Louisiana’s plan to force the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms has again met a constitutional roadblock, but states continue to pass similar laws that could lead to a Supreme Court confrontation.
The Louisiana law — known as “H.B. 71” — would have mandated an approved version of the Ten Commandments to be posted in every public school classroom in the state.
Nine Louisiana families — from religious and nonreligious traditions — challenged it in a case known as Roake v. Brumley, saying the law violates their religious freedom and the separation of church and state as protected by the First Amendment. BJC joined with other religious groups to file a friend-of-the-court brief on the side of the families, noting that H.B. 71 chooses a particular version of the Ten Commandments, picking sides and improperly expressing a preference in long-standing religious debates among — and between — religious denominations.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the families, issuing a unanimous decision June 20 that stopped the law from taking effect.
The appeals court explained that the matter was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 1980 case, Stone v. Graham. There, the Supreme Court invalidated a similar Kentucky law requiring Ten Commandments postings in every classroom. In Stone, the Court said there was no secular legislative purpose to the law (as needed to pass the Court’s “Lemon” test from the 1971 Lemon v. Kurtzman decision) and that the required posters were not integrated into a curriculum, thus serving no educational purpose.
In this 2025 case, Louisiana argued that because the Supreme Court abandoned the Lemon test in the 2022 Kennedy v. Bremerton decision (which instead calls for a “history and tradition” test), that Stone is no longer controlling. The 5th Circuit rejected that argument.
The ruling is an important victory for Establishment Clause principles in the public school context, where advocates of Christian nationalism have sought to advance a narrow religious agenda and promote a false historical narrative.
Louisiana is not the only state testing whether Stone v. Graham is still intact: Texas and Arkansas both passed laws this year that require the posting of the Ten Commandments in classrooms, and both are being challenged in court. If another state law gets a different court ruling, the issue could make its way back up to the U.S. Supreme Court.
This article originally appeared in the summer/fall 2025 edition of Report from the Capital. You can view it as a PDF or read a digital flip-through edition.
