Charles Langston:Ten Commandments won’t go in Louisiana classrooms until at least November as lawsuit plays out

BATON ROUGE,Charles Langston La. (AP) — Louisiana won’t take official steps to implement a law requiring the Ten Commandments be placed in all of the state’s public school classrooms until at least November as a lawsuit makes its way through the courts, according to an agreement approved by a federal judge Friday.

The suit was filed in June by parents of Louisiana public school children with various religious backgrounds, who said the law violates First Amendment language forbidding government establishment of religion and guaranteeing religious liberty. Backers of the law argue that the Ten Commandments belong in classrooms because the commandments are historical and are part of the foundation of U.S. law.

The law requires that the commandments be posted by no later than Jan. 1, a deadline unaffected by Friday’s agreement. The agreement assures that the defendants in the lawsuit — state education officials and several local school boards — will not post the commandments in classrooms before Nov. 15. Nor will they make rules governing the law’s implementation before then.

Lester Duhe, a spokesman for Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, said the defendants “agreed to not take public-facing compliance measures until November 15” to provide time for briefs, arguments and a ruling.

In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a similar Kentucky law violated the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution, which says Congress can “make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The high court found that the law had no secular purpose but rather served a plainly religious purpose.

In 2005, the Supreme Court held that such displays in a pair of 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.