S6, Ep. 08: Ten Commandments and Trump’s first week

In this week’s show, Amanda and Holly discuss the problems with government mandates to post the Ten Commandments in classrooms, focusing on a case out of Louisiana. BJC and other Christian groups filed a brief in that case to explain why, as Christians, we oppose the Louisiana law and how the government’s decision to choose a religious text to display in a public school setting not only cheapens our faith but also puts the government in a role it is not called to play. Plus, Amanda and Holly talk through  President Donald Trump’s first week back in the White House, sharing where they saw concerning signs for religion and religious liberty. 

SHOW NOTES
Segment 1 (starting at 00:38): President Trump’s first week back and backlash to a sermon 

Amanda and Holly talked about ways to handle a constant influx of news and the dangers of “God saved me” rhetoric when others died in the episode after the 2024 election: S6, Ep. 04: Election Day: What happened and where do we go from here

Amanda wrote a piece for Bloomberg Opinion about the backlash to Bishop Mariann Budde’s sermon at the service of unity and what it teaches us about religious freedom: Trump’s Response to Bishop’s Sermon on Unity Is Un-American

Learn more about the two new religious liberty cases to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in this piece on our website: U.S. Supreme Court agrees to hear cases involving religious school funding, parent rights to opt out of grade school curriculum

Amanda and Holly discussed the issues with religious charter schools in 2024: S5, Ep. 16: The trouble with *religious* charter schools

Read more about the lawsuit filed by a group of Quaker congregations opposing raids in churches on religious freedom grounds in this article by Bernie Pazanowski for Bloomberg Law: Quakers Sue to Block Trump’s Immigration Raids in Churches

 

Segment 2 (starting at 14:21): Louisiana’s mandate to post the Ten Commandments in classrooms

Read the brief from BJC and other Chrisitan groups in Roake v. Brumley at this link.

Learn more about the case in this post on our website: BJC urges federal appeals court to reject Louisiana law requiring public school classrooms to post the Ten Commandments

Holly and Amanda discussed the Kennedy v. Bremerton decision and its abandonment of the Lemon test in this episode in 2022: S3, Ep. 21: Not solving a problem, but creating one: Dissecting the Kennedy v. Bremerton decision 

Holly and Amanda discussed the Ten Commandments on two episodes in 2023 when a bill was being discussed in Texas:
S4, Ep. 20: The Ten Commandments
S4, Ep. 21: 613 Commandments: James Talarico on his defense of church-state separation as a Christian

Segment 3 (starting 29:53): Oral arguments and what’s next

Hear last week’s oral arguments in this case at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at this link.

Respecting Religion is made possible by BJC’s generous donors. Your gift to BJC is tax-deductible, and you can support these conversations with a gift to BJC.

 

Transcript: Season 6, Episode 08: Ten Commandments and Trump’s first week (some parts of this transcript have been edited for clarity)    

 

HOLLY: It’s offensive for the government to come in and pick and choose a scripture, hold it up, say that this is what’s most important.

AMANDA: There is no American law that says, You shall obey the Lord your God. That is religious instruction.

 

Segment 1: President Trump’s first week back and backlash to a sermon (starting at 00:38)

AMANDA: Welcome to Respecting Religion, a BJC podcast series where we look at religion, the law, and what’s at stake for faith freedom today. I’m Amanda Tyler, executive director of BJC.

HOLLY: And I’m general counsel Holly Hollman. On today’s episode, we’re going to talk about the problems with government mandates to post the Ten Commandments in classrooms, focusing on a case out of Louisiana that was heard in federal court last week.

We at BJC filed a brief in that case with other Christian groups to explain why we, as Christians, oppose the Louisiana law and how such efforts — government’s choosing of religious texts to display at a public school setting — not only cheapens our faith but harms religion and government by putting government in this role that it is not called to play, period.

AMANDA: Right, Holly. This is a very important topic that seems to come up a lot and has come up a lot over the years in state legislatures, in various communities, even in conversations that we have, and some of the questions we hear are: Should the government mandate the posting of the Ten Commandments? Can the government post the Ten Commandments?

And if we like the Ten Commandments — which we do — why don’t we want them posted by government? And maybe a better question is: Why are people so into this ongoing debate? It’s been going on for decades, and there is still so much to talk about.

HOLLY: But before we dive in, Amanda, it’s very good to see you today, and we should note this context that we’re working in. We’re just through the first week of the Trump administration, and some issues came up impacting religious freedom. We’re in the middle of a lot of developments with a new administration being sworn in, a flurry of executive orders, litigation filed in response and more in the making, and then the Supreme Court decided to take a couple of religion-related cases.

AMANDA: That’s right. We’re recording on Monday, January 27, so just seven days after the inauguration. And as I’ve heard a few people comment to me, Last week was a very long year. It feels like so much was packed into a short amount of time.

And so, who knows how often we’ll do this on our podcast this season, but I thought it’d be helpful to kind of just go through some of the top lines of what we’re seeing. And some of these conversations are ones that, Holly, I bet we’re going to dive deeper into in future episodes.

But first — and this is something that I have just heard in a lot of conversations that I’ve had, but people are just feeling very overwhelmed: overwhelmed by the amount of executive action, about real concern for vulnerable communities, for how things are changing when it comes to the federal bureaucracy and the impacts on the civil service.

And so, what do we do about this feeling of overwhelm? And I have to say, I think we had some pretty good guidance back in our post-election episode that we had a few months ago, Holly, where I remember advising people to start getting their news in a digest, that if we try to just kind of go from news alert to news alert, one, we’re going to spend all our time checking our phone and looking at the news alerts.

But, two, it feeds into this feeling of inevitability or helplessness that, I think, is really counterproductive to the kind of response and reaction that we need from all Americans in this moment, that this is the moment that we all recommit to the project of democracy and not exempt ourselves from it and, I think, kind of really focusing in on where each person can make a meaningful difference — and that’s likely going to happen in their local community — will help us not be so overwhelmed by all of the news coming out of Washington.

HOLLY: Yeah. I think everyone who wants to participate in democracy, wants to know what’s going on. They want to have good information. They want to stay on top of things. They want to hold government to account. And I think across the board, across the political spectrum, we have seen a response that has been surprised by the aggressiveness, the bold action broadly pursued, with a lot of questions of, Can he do that, or, what’s going to stop him from doing that.

And so we’re really in this process of having to see how some of these decisions shake out. Are they going to be challenged in court? Are they going to be drawn back a little bit? And I think your advice is really well taken, Amanda, that we have to do our best to get good information but not be overwhelmed by it and really think about what we can do.

I think another thing that we should note is in the inauguration, a very prominent statement that President Trump sort of doubled down on this idea that he was divinely ordained to be the president. And, Amanda, we’ve talked about that, because that’s a real concern for us. We’re critical of all candidates, regardless of party, when they assume that they were somehow chosen as a matter of religion, as opposed to being elected to serve in a secular office.

But, that’s what President Trump said at his inauguration, that he felt it even more having survived the assassination attempt. And I’m afraid that that may have emboldened him to act more aggressively, even in areas where we would all hope he uses more caution.

AMANDA: Claiming both a sense of God’s providential hand that personally saved him — we’ve talked previously about the theological problems about, then why wouldn’t God save other people who were harmed and even killed at the outdoor rally in Pennsylvania, but also that there was a divine reason for his candidacy, as if God wants to, quote, make America great again.

And, you know, it’s hard to think of a more textbook example of Christian nationalism and this merger of political and religious authority and this claiming of religious mandate for all of the actions that are to follow.

And, you know, I was deeply troubled by the statement, God saved me to make America great again, and I was more troubled by the response in the Capitol rotunda, thunderous applause, people jumping to their feet, extended ovation, so that that idea of divine mandate was endorsed and seconded and approved of by the members of Congress and other collected guests in the rotunda.

HOLLY: Well, I’m going to choose to interpret that, Amanda, as they were glad he survived, because I’m going to keep on this work and respect him as the president, but know that he was not given authority by God, or it would be wrong for us to assume that, because we know one of the major problems with that is it gives cover that can’t be questioned to anything that he would do as an official.

AMANDA: Well, you’re a little more generous than I am, Holly, because I think for me, I am seeing that as an example of just saying, yes, to everything he says, that any kind of dissent is going to be marginalized and quashed.

And that’s exactly what I think we did see the next day at the National Cathedral at this service of unity, where Bishop Mariann Budde delivered a sermon in which the sermon was about unity, and she called on a number of different Christian virtues in the sermon, as one would expect an Episcopal bishop to call upon.

And what became very controversial was the last two minutes of the sermon in which she began to speak directly to President Trump and asked him to show mercy for the people in our country who are scared.

I wrote an opinion piece for Bloomberg Opinion on what happened in the cathedral and then the response to it and talked about how this really put a bright light on both the importance of religious freedom to our constitutional democracy and also the threats to it. And I think we saw what will happen when people from any vantage point — including from a pulpit, from a religious vantage point — dare to question the president and his policies.

President Trump responded, saying that she was a “so-called bishop,” questioning her legitimacy. A member of Congress filed a resolution to condemn her words, which seems to be a pretty egregious incursion on religious freedom. And there’ve been a lot of violent threats made against the bishop since then.

So it was a real wake-up call to what will happen when people dare to not agree with everything that President Trump says, but I think it’s an example to all of us for what may be required in these moments.

HOLLY: Well, I appreciate that you wrote that piece and responded as you did, and the freedom of religion and freedom of speech, we know, are precious and must be defended and must be used responsibly, so that we can maintain it, to have the kind of debate that is necessary, the kind of freedom that can call power to account, to do what the government needs to do to represent all the people. So thank you, Amanda.

And then the Supreme Court used its conference days to take on a couple of religion cases. Many of you know from this podcast or from your prior support for BJC and its advocacy work that we had a short respite from religion cases last term. Last term, of course, was meaty, in that it had that blockbuster immunity case, as well as other important cases that we discussed on Respecting Religion.

But there was not a religion clause case or anything that really touched on the relationship between church and state or religious freedom so directly. And the Court has already granted one case back in the fall that is sort of a technical case about religious freedom and statutory protections.

And then right around inauguration time, we learned that there were two other grants. First, the Court granted cert in a case called Mahmoud v. Taylor. It involves a challenge to a Montgomery County, Maryland, school policy and whether or not parents have the right to opt their children out of particular programming that they feel is at odds with their religion. It is a case that is not well developed on the record, it seems, and so it will be very interesting to see how the Court approaches that.

Secondly, the Court decided to grant cert in the Oklahoma charter school case. The case arises out of a 2023 decision by the Oklahoma Charter School Board to approve a Catholic school’s application for charter school funding. And, remember, charter schools are public schools. And the Court decided to intervene, and we’ll see what the Court does, but the Oklahoma Supreme Court had said that that charter school program violated Oklahoma statutory law, the Oklahoma constitution, as well as the federal Constitution.

Of course, charter schools are slightly different from the traditional public schools, but they are — and particularly in Oklahoma it’s very clear — they are public schools and must provide a general education and not a specifically religious education.

So here we go.

AMANDA: And I know, Holly, that we will have many more conversations on the podcast in the months to come about those two cases.

One of the other actions taken in the first week of the Trump administration was to rescind a memo that had been written and issued by the prior Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security that named certain places as, quote/unquote, “sensitive” locations in which law enforcement and ICE officials could not go to make arrests relating to immigration or deportation.

And the impact of that, when it comes to religious freedom, is that some of those sensitive locations were houses of worship. And so as we record today, there has just been a lawsuit filed that was brought by a group of Quakers, challenging that action on the basis of religious freedom and more specifically the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. And so we are watching that litigation very closely and will have future conversations about that action and the impact that it is having.

I have heard that — you know, that action took place last week. Of course, we’ve just been through the first weekend of the new Trump administration, and this Sunday, that there was at least one house of worship that was raided and a worship service interrupted in order for an arrest to be made. So this is very much a new and active issue that we are following closely.

 

 

Segment 2: Louisiana’s mandate to post the Ten Commandments in classrooms (starting at 14:21)

AMANDA: So the courts are busy places these days, Holly, in a lot of different actions. One of the cases that predated this new administration was a case that was brought to challenge a law out of the state of Louisiana that was a government mandate to post the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms. So let’s talk about this case, Holly.

HOLLY: Yeah. These kinds of disputes are not new, posting of Scripture or religious monuments on government land and specifically displays involving the Ten Commandments are not really new. BJC has a long tradition of speaking out against them and explaining why government promotion of religion often undermines religious beliefs.

We often say that for faith to be vital it has to be voluntary, and we’ve noted that often what the government funds or promotes, the government inevitably uses for its own purposes. So even when there’s a good end, it can often go in different directions. And we’re not saying that to be against government in general, but to say that we’re not going to give government the right to be the boss in matters of religion.

Many Baptist individuals, churches, other friends and partners in this fight for religious freedom recognize that. They tell us about how these kinds of disputes work out in the community. Even those well-meaning – there are some well-meaning people who want to promote the Ten Commandments in their communities — end up seeing that it often causes conflict. It divides communities, and it rarely has been heard to advance the ostensible purposes of those well-meaning types who just want to somehow advance a general morality in the public square or in the public schools.

So let’s back up for a second to talk about this specific case and why we are back in the courts. This case is Roake v. Brumley, and we’re talking about it now because they just had a hearing in the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans last week after a district court granted an injunction, finding that this law was not enforceable.

The case stems from new legislation. The governor signed a law back in June 2024, mandating that every classroom in the state of Louisiana permanently display a certain version of the Ten Commandments — so every public school classroom, from kindergarten all the way to LSU and the other public universities there.

Nine families from various religious and nonreligious traditions challenged the law in court as a violation of their religious freedom. The families were represented by the ACLU, ACLU of Louisiana, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, and pro bono counsel at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett.

And as I noted, they received a favorable outcome, a very long and detailed decision on a preliminary injunction, which means the plaintiffs went to court right away to stop this action because it was so wrong under the Constitution and current case law. They received that favorable decision, and, of course, it immediately went up on appeal.

So BJC and other Christian groups came together to file an amicus brief in the case — sometimes these briefs are called “friend of the court briefs,” sometimes they’re called “amicus” — to explain how this Louisiana law really creates this unavoidable state-sponsored religious indoctrination. We really wanted to support these families in this case and be clear that this is an example of the government acting way beyond its boundaries.

AMANDA: Well, and when we talk about the government acting beyond its boundaries — and you said this quickly, Holly, but, you know, that this was on its face unconstitutional, and that’s because there is a Supreme Court precedent dating all the way back to 1980 that says that this exact proposal — posting of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms — violates the No Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

And so the fact that states like Louisiana, like my home state of Texas tried to do and, by the way, was really upset that they weren’t the first ones to do it but are going to try to do it again this year — the reason they’re even trying to do it is because they sense an opening with this Supreme Court to try to overturn precedent.

You know, we’ve seen this Court overturn other precedents like Roe v. Wade, of course, with the Dobbs case, but also they are interpreting the case of Kennedy v. Bremerton to say that because the Court has said that the Lemon test is no longer a good test for Establishment Clause cases, that they’re going to go after any case that had at all used Lemon as part of its reasoning to rule other actions unconstitutional.

So it’s really a very bold move to challenge something so directly, and so we, Holly, and a number of others thought this is an important point, this is an important time for us to explain, Lemon test or not, this is still violating the Constitution and that this is still a very bad idea and very harmful to religious freedom.

HOLLY: Yeah. There was nothing in the Kennedy v. Bremerton case that gave government the broad role to now lead people, public school children or, you know, citizens at large, in religious exercises. But that’s exactly what we’re seeing in this case.

We’ve talked a little bit about this issue of government involvement in religion in a way that promotes religion acting out of bounds in previous episodes, episodes 20 and 21 of season 4, and we’ll link to those in the show notes to give a little more background, and particularly having mentioned the debate that was quite fulsome in Texas in the last legislative session, and I’m hopeful that this positive decision by the Louisiana District Court — and perhaps we’ll get one by this panel in the Fifth Circuit — will be something that slows down this push in some state legislatures, but I’m not betting on it.

AMANDA: So, Holly, as BJC’s general counsel, you represented us on the brief to the 5th Circuit. Can you go over some of the main points of the brief?

HOLLY: Yeah. Of course, the plaintiffs in this case make lots of different arguments, including the fact, Amanda, as you said, that this legislation is on all fours with Stone v. Graham from 1980, and whatever the Court has done in recent years, it has not said that it’s overturned Stone v. Graham, so, of course, we mentioned that.

But we really wanted to particularly focus on this Establishment Clause issue of the government itself not having the authority to teach religion, to lead in religious exercises, religious indoctrination. We are familiar with the Ten Commandments and what they say, and these are instructions.

And so for the government to put these in every classroom is essentially the government not only promoting religion but leading in what we saw as very similar to classroom prayer — which, of course, government-sponsored classroom prayer was held unconstitutional in the 1960s cases, and even as this Court has become, as I say, leaning toward more religious expression in the public square, a little softer on advancing religion in different arenas, the Court has not in any case said that those cases were not good law.

They’ve said nothing to indicate that the government has authority to lead in religious instruction, and particularly we know that it’s been a concern for the Court to protect religious freedom in public schools in light of the age of children and the compulsory attendance requirements.

So we focused on the importance of maintaining the rule in those essential cases that are still good law and serve to protect religious freedom and hold communities together and really support this joint effort we have of public schools preparing people for democracy and involvement in the community and respecting each other’s religion.

And also we did a little work on explaining how, even though we’re Christian groups, we have our differences. There are different denominations, and we look to scripture and interpret it in different ways. There are different translations of the Bible. There are different ways of interpreting Scripture. And they’re important.

They’re important to believers. They’re important to the formation of religious communities, and so it’s offensive for the government to come in and pick and choose a scripture, hold it up, say that this is what’s most important, kind of getting in the way of these meaningful differences among Christians and kind of promoting that on behalf of the government.

AMANDA: Yeah. And if I can just — I’ll just read a little excerpt from the brief that makes that point, I think, very well. The piece of legislation at issue here is called HB 71, House Bill 71. So this is from our brief.

“HB 71 grants preferential treatment to a single version of the Ten Commandments. No single religion owns the Ten Commandments, nor can any single denomination claim authority over their proper translation or interpretation. There are multiple versions of the Commandments, and theological debate continues among (and even within) different denominations about the correct translation and interpretation of the Commandments. Through HB 71, the Louisiana legislature declares a victor in this debate by selecting a single ‘correct’ version to be imposed on every child in the Louisiana public school system, regardless of their religious beliefs.”

So I think that that passage is so important and educational, I hope, to the judges ruling in these cases that there’s great complexity. And this kind of gets to one of the, I think, foundational ideas of religious freedom, Holly, that the idea of separation and church and no establishment of religion actually respects religion, respects its special and different status in our society, and that when government authorities get involved with their kind of blunt instrument of legislation, that they can really miss the beautiful nuance and the theological debates of religion, and that it’s just not the job of the government to be choosing one version of any text as the correct and official one over others.

HOLLY: Yeah. We really felt it was our duty to explain for those that, you know, just think it’s no big deal because they’re familiar with the Ten Commandments and, of course, the Ten Commandments include some general rules that many people agree on and are part of the law — like don’t steal and don’t kill.

But it has its essential religious components, and it comes out of a religious story. It comes out of holy Scripture, important to Jews and Christians as a way of telling their faith story. This is their forebears. This forms a basis of how they come together and what they think about Scripture. It has real meaning.

Before we even talked about the preferential treatment to a single version, we wanted, as amici, to note that importance of Scripture to all of us in the Christian tradition. And speaking of amici, this really was a joint project that included the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the General Synod of the United Church of Christ, the Reverend Jihyun Oh as Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A., and the Most Reverend Sean W. Rowe, Presiding Bishop and Primate of The Episcopal Church.

So you had different denominations coming together. We have our different seminaries. We have different pastoral traditions, but all were united in wanting to be clear that we oppose the government working in this way, not only for ourselves but because of the message that it sends to our non-Christian brothers and sisters. We don’t want the government to try to portray Christianity in a certain way and use the force of its position, government mandates, to promote religion.

We were also very fortunate to work with attorneys in the private law firm of Orrick, Harrington & Sutcliff, who provided invaluable pro bono work on this effort, as well as getting great input from prominent religious liberty professors like Doug Laycock and Bob Tuttle.

It’s just really important to note that this is not just some historical document. This is not something just to be used as decorative material. This is holy Scripture that involves instruction. And that’s how children in the public schools would see it.

“I am the Lord thy God. Thou shall have no other god before me. Thou shall not make to thyself any graven image. Thou shall not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. Remember the Sabbath day to keep holy.”

And, Amanda, you know as you and I see that Scripture, we have lots of thoughts and lots of conversations in our heads about what this means to us as individual believers and members of church communities that care about Scripture and what it meant in our story and how it continues to be explored for meaning and application to our current lives.

AMANDA: Yeah. And I really appreciated in the brief, you know, how specifically what our interests were here. I’m just going to quote again.

“The Ten Commandments represent the original law handed down by God to Moses, with explicitly religious instructions to, inter alia, worship God, forsake all other religions, and observe the Sabbath. HB 71’s posting requirement ensures that these religious instructions will be conveyed continuously, without exception, to every student in Louisiana’s public schools throughout their formative years. This compelled observance by children of religious tenets stated in the Ten Commandments violates the Establishment Clause.”

And, you know, what I think is so important, again, about this argument is the reminding: these are religious instructions. There’s this zombie argument out there that somehow the Ten Commandments are the basis for all of American law and policy, and that is just not the case. Right? There is no American law that says, You shall obey the Lord your God, you know, that you shall have no other gods before me. That is religious instruction, and to claim otherwise really cheapens the religious nature of these sacred words.

 

 

Segment 3: Oral arguments and what’s next (starting at 29:53)

HOLLY: Well, we were glad to speak out about this founding vision that separates the institutions of church and state and to talk about what this means for people in Louisiana and why we hope that the 5th Circuit upholds the lower court decision, which brings us to this argument that we both listened to. It was nice and short and orderly, compared to those long Supreme Court ones.

AMANDA: I know. I was like, oh, only 42 minutes? This is in and out on this argument!

HOLLY: I liked that part. Interestingly, it was an oral argument. You just had the advocates for the two sides arguing before a panel of the 5th Circuit. Of course, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit covers the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, and this was a panel sitting in New Orleans, appropriately for this Louisiana case.

And most of the arguments really were about whether or not this case was ripe to go forward, whether the parties had standing, which I think is really interesting that that’s what Louisiana is trying to stop and say, because we know the record is what the record is.

The state of Louisiana mandates this posting and tells the schools what it has to look like, what it has to say, what’s there. There’s some leeway in different things they can do with it, but every single classroom has to have this clearly posted, and that part of the case is really well developed by the district court.

AMANDA: Yeah. I found some of those arguments a little thin. Right? This idea that we don’t exactly know what this is going to look like. Well, if you look at the actual text of the legislation, they’re pretty clear about how big the poster needs to be and what the exact words are.

And so then it became like, how big is the classroom? Is it at the front or the back of the classroom? It was a little — it was a bit of a stretch to hear these arguments.

It was interesting, too, that the 5th Circuit sits in New Orleans, but there was that freak snowstorm in New Orleans last week, so the arguments were actually held on Zoom, so, you know, I thought that was — I don’t know if that impacted how the judges were interacting with the advocates in this case or not.

You know, one thing about the 5th Circuit, some listeners might understand, there have been some really —

HOLLY: It’s your favorite?

AMANDA: [Laughing.] Yeah. Well, it is my home circuit. I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite circuit, because there have been some really extreme cases coming out of the 5th Circuit.

HOLLY: We’ve talked about some of those. That’s right.

AMANDA: Some of them have been so extreme that the Supreme Court has struck them down recently. They have quite a losing record at the U.S. Supreme Court. When you have a case like this, you have a randomly assigned panel. This particular panel has one Republican appointee and two Democratic appointees. They’re appointed by President George W. Bush, by President Clinton, and by President Biden.

So I was a little surprised that it was the Republican appointee, Judge Catharina Haynes, who was the most active in the argument and who seemed most sympathetic to the arguments made by the plaintiffs. She had some very, I think, incisive questioning on the merits of the case, you know, really pushing the advocate, well, isn’t the school classroom a different context than, say, the posting of the Ten Commandments on the courthouse or capitol grounds?

HOLLY: Yeah. I was impressed, too, at her liveliness and kind of getting into it in both the standing questions but also kind of pushing a little bit and saying, you know, Why do they have to do this?; I mean, the Ten Commandments are great, but, you know, why did the state do this?; and really touched on some of the merits, and then had that killer ending in my view, which is to the advocate, Do you have any law to suggest something like this has been upheld in the past?

And he had to kind of, you know, had to hesitate a little bit. Of course he doesn’t, because there’s a direct case on point, saying it’s unconstitutional. But, he’s pushing to say maybe it’s like the pledge or something else. I can’t remember exactly what he said. But, you know, that made very clear that there is not an open door to this kind of display in every public classroom.

AMANDA: So I think that brings us, Holly, to: What do we expect to come next? We are used to following the Supreme Court and know kind of when those decisions come out. Judge Haynes in this case said something during argument that they’re going to do their best to decide this sooner rather than later, so they might be thinking about this on an expedited basis.

Usually when there’s a decision by a panel of a court, the lower will often go to say we want an en banc hearing, which means we want everyone on this court to decide something, so that could be coming after that, and I guess it could eventually, depending on what the response is and what the parties do, this could end up working its way all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

HOLLY: Or if the 5th Circuit upholds it, hopefully that would be the end of this dispute, and we can move on to more meaningful ways of bringing communities together, setting a good example, and respecting each other’s religious freedom.

AMANDA: Let it be.

HOLLY: We’ll link to the brief and to other resources mentioned today in the show notes, so you can learn more about this dispute and be prepared for conversations as this might come up in your community.

But that brings us to the close of this episode of Respecting Religion, and we’re glad you joined us. For more information on what we discussed, visit our website at RespectingReligion.org for the show notes and the transcript of this program.

AMANDA: Respecting Religion is produced and edited by Cherilyn Guy.

HOLLY: You can learn more about our work at BJC defending faith freedom for all by visiting our website at BJConline.org.

AMANDA: We would love to hear from you. You can send both of us an email by writing to [email protected]. We are also on social media @BJContheHill, and you can follow me on X, Bluesky, and Threads @AmandaTylerBJC.

HOLLY: And if you enjoyed the show, share it with others. Take a moment to leave us a review or a five-star rating to help other people find it.

AMANDA: We also want to thank you for supporting this podcast. You can donate to these conversations by visiting the link in our show notes.

HOLLY: Join us next time for a new conversation Respecting Religion.