A federal judge in Louisiana has just succumbed to a common misinterpretation of the First Amendment’s religion clauses by ruling unconstitutional a state law that would require the display of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms.
The newly enacted legislation is reported to have been closely watched elsewhere, because Louisiana was the first state to enact such a mandate in over 40 years, ever since the Supreme Court rejected a similar Kentucky law on the same grounds. This time the Louisiana legislature sought to circumvent the objection that the law somehow represented an unconstitutional establishment of religion by requiring that each classroom poster containing the commandments also includes a three-paragraph statement describing them as “a prominent part of American education for almost three centuries.”
The added statement, designed to indicate that the display’s purpose was educational rather than purely theological, did not suffice to absolve it from the judgment of U.S. District Court Judge John W. deGravelles (an Obama appointee), who ruled that it was unconstitutionally “coercive” to students. “For all practical purposes,” deGravelles said, students would be unable to “opt out of viewing” the Commandments “every day of the year, every year of their education.”
Judge deGravelles’s decision came in response to a lawsuit filed by nine families with children in Louisiana public schools, including (according to the New York Times) “at least two Unitarian Universalist families, a Jewish family, an atheist family, a Presbyterian family, and some nonreligious families.”
One of the parents involved in the suit, a Unitarian Universalist minister, described the judge’s decision as a source of relief, since the law constituted “a direct infringement of our religious-freedom rights,” adding that, “as an interfaith family, we expect our children to receive their secular education in public school and their religious education at home and within our faith communities,” rather than “from government officials.”
In defense of Judge deGravelles’s decision, it must be seen as following a precedent set out in a 5-4 judgment by the U.S. Supreme Court in Lee v. Weisman (1992). In that case, the Court ruled unconstitutional the practice in Providence, Rhode Island, of having clergy of differing faiths deliver secular blessings at public school graduation ceremonies, on the ground that students might feel “compelled” to attend the ceremonies despite their opposition to such benedictions – owing to the importance of graduation in a student’s life, or “peer pressure” to attend. But there is ample legal justification for believing that the Court’s decision in that case was wrong, and its reasoning should be reversed should the scheduled appeals to Judge deGravelles’s judgment reach the High Court.
The first error in both the Louisiana decision and the Court majority’s ruling in the Providence case is that they collapse the distinction between two distinct clauses of the First Amendment regarding religion: the prohibition on Congress’s enacting a “law respecting the establishment of religion” and the guarantee of the “free exercise” of religion. However one interprets the ambiguous phrase “respecting the establishment of” (as opposed to the simpler “establishing”), its central purpose was clearly to ban the creation of an established national church, such as existed in England (and as continued to exist in various forms in several states), adherents to which might therefore become the particular beneficiaries of the officially endorsed faith.
Only with the Supreme Court’s “incorporation” of the establishment clause into the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause in Everson v. Board of Education (1947) was it held to apply to the states. But in that case, despite adopting Thomas Jefferson’s description of the Constitution as establishing a “wall of separation” between church and state (a phrase nowhere to be found in the document), the Court upheld New Jersey’s practice of reimbursing parents of students who attended parochial and other private schools, putting them on an equal footing with parents of public school students. It simply rejected the claim of a New Jersey taxpayer that the expenditure constituted a form of unconstitutional religious establishment.
Going further, in the 1952 case Zorach v. Clauson, the Court upheld the practice of public schools allowing students “released time” to attend religious classes, with the libertarian Justice William O. Douglas remarking in his majority opinion that Americans “are a religious people, whose institutions presuppose a supreme being,” and denying that the First Amendment dictates “that in every and all respects there shall be a separation of Church and State,” lest “the state and religion” become “aliens to each other – hostile, suspicious, and even unfriendly.” Were such a strict separation established, Douglas observed, not only would municipalities be forbidden “to render police or fire protection to religious groups,” but “a fastidious atheist or agnostic could even object to the supplication with which the Court opens each session: ‘God save the United States and this Honorable Court.’”
Whatever their professed religious beliefs (or lack thereof), the plaintiffs in both the Louisiana case and in Lee v. Weisman were “fastidious” indeed. What possible harm could come to a determinedly atheistic student from viewing the Ten Commandments in the classroom (or, for that matter, from hearing a nondenominational, even secular, blessing recited by a clergyman at his graduation)?
Moreover, how can anyone deny the central importance of religion to America’s national identity and history? George Washington in his farewell address stated that, “of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.” The Northwest Ordinance, enacted by the same Congress that adopted the First Amendment, held that “Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”
Whether or not an individual believes the tenets of Christianity or Judaism, what possible objection can one have to the Ten Commandments’ prohibitions on murder, theft, adultery, or dishonesty, or the command to honor one’s parents? (So widely recognized are these rules even among peoples whose religions are not based on the Bible that some maintain they embody a universal or “natural” law accessible to unaided reason.)
In his classic Democracy in America, while applauding the religious freedom Americans enjoy, Alexis de Tocqueville observes that our mores, the foundation of our liberty, are supported by the widespread practice of religion, practice indeed encouraged by the sort of “peer pressure” to which the Louisiana plaintiffs object. He adds that the “natural condition” of people in a democracy is favorable to religion, since even atheists see it as desirable to conceal rather than advertise their unbelief, and if they are intelligent, will appreciate the utilitarian benefits that religion supplies to their society as a ground of morality and civic benevolence.
But in fact, neither the Louisiana case nor Lee v. Weisman should ever have come before a court at all. Under the Supreme Court’s “standing” doctrine, generally followed in lesser courts as well, in order to bring suit, a plaintiff must have a plausible case that he has suffered a distinct injury (or a threatened one). But the Establishment clause of the Constitution confers no justiciable rights on any individual – any more than, say, the provision that a Presidential veto of a Congressional act can be overridden only by a vote of two-thirds of each house. It simply forms part of the structureof our government.
To treat the Establishment clause as conferring justiciable rights on private individuals is to conflate it with the other clause of the First Amendment dealing with religion, which immediately follows it: the ban on any law prohibiting its “free exercise.”
That clause, guaranteeing religious toleration, is one of the great glories of our Constitutional order. Of necessity, it has spawned a considerable body of jurisprudence, dealing with questions of just how religion is to be distinguished from irreligion, or what the limits of its “exercise” are.
Consider, for example, Employment Division v. Smith (1990), permitting a state to deny unemployment benefits to federal employees who had been dismissed for using peyote, though it was part of a Native American religious ceremony; and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (2014), allowing a privately held corporation an exemption from a provision of the Affordable Care Act requiring that it pay for abortifacients, since such payment violated the owner’s religious beliefs.
But these cases have nothing to do with the Establishment clause. And in fact, as political theorist William Galston observed in his 1991 book Liberal Purposes, when the courts sharpen the political conflict between “liberals” and “fundamentalists” by “emphasizing the requirement of state neutrality [regarding religious and moral issues] in areas previously seen as the legitimate arena for collective moral judgment,” they threaten the possibility of reasonable political consensus on which free government depends.
Otherwise put, as the distinguished Federal judge J. Harvie Wilkinson observed two decades ago when lamenting his colleagues’ ruling that voluntary dinner prayers at Virginia Military Institute violated the establishment clause, “When courts push too insistently at shared understandings and accommodations – reached over time and given meaning through the customs and rituals of observance – they risk inflaming the sorts of religious passion that the establishment clause was designed to prevent.”
Whatever the plaintiffs in the Rhode Island and Louisiana cases may believe, nothing in our Constitution guarantees citizens a right not to be offended by otherwise non-noxious public displays or practices. And in reality, merely having to see the religious beliefs shared by most Americans since the first European settlement might teach the children of those militant unbelievers or “interfaith families” a valuable message of tolerance as well as a deeper appreciation, as a lesson in civics, of the principles that have contributed to their country’s freedom, prosperity, and greatness.
David Lewis Schaefer is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science at College of the Holy Cross.
Add these Satanic bureaucracies to the DOGE hit list:
Once again, the nation is seeing the corruption that has entered into the judicial system and continues to attack the foundation that the nation was built on. The Founding Fathers are rolling in their graves. The Church and those who wish to continue to have their freedoms need to stand up in opposition and voice their concerns to their appropriate state and federal representatives. There is a lot to correct and straighten out to get the nation back on track. The foundation that this nation was founded on needs to be repaired and strengthen against the Adversary.
I find it ironic that Moses and the two stone tablets depicting the Ten Commandments are on top of the Supreme Court building.
Those that are commenting on separation of church & state should/need to READ what that statement actually means. The true meaning will surprise you. Hopefully, all of you will LEARN a new lesson in U.S. History.
Surely Ten Commandments are not worse than LGBTQ doctrine or Marxist teachings or any other brainwash that is forced on our children. If it is not allowed, then no other religion must be allowed, including political ideologies. Strictly academics, I would have no problem with that.
I’m pretty sure this judge swore an oath, maybe even on the Bible. But oaths, vows and promises are just words people use as a means to get in or to get out of something. Obviously, some judges seem less than honorable, especially when they’re nominated and confirmed by people with the same values.
We are a constitutional republic and NOT a democracy. How many people want the devil in charge of our government? I think they much prefer GOD and NOT the devil!
Anybody other than a satanist want to argue that point?
FACT: America is a Judeo-Christian country with a smattering of other religions. All are free to worship as they please. Read the 5 Pillars of Islam and the 10 Rules of Islam. Easy to google. Notice any similarities?
Beautiful idea! Should be placed at a location where everyone can see and read.
Since when are the Ten Commandments bad advice? Regardless of your religion, reading them every day will help you function in society and live a good life.
AMEN!
I believe it would be very helpful to look at Christian schools and how they intertwine religion into the class room. I didn’t send or pay for my 4 kids to go to Christian private schools to be preachers. I sent them there to get an education in a safe Christian environment. It should be known that not all families who send their kids to Christian schools are Christians but send their kids to Christians schools for the same reasons I do.
However, mostly all of us believe in God or something similar but we worship differently. So it would be difficult to bring religion into the classroom and not offend someone. Even within a religion, whether it be Babtist, Catholic, Lutheran, Later Day Saints, etc. there are radically different believes. Finding common ground is not easy and you’re not sending your kids to public school for religion classes. All most of you want is a safe place for your children to receive a reasonably good education. And you’re not doing very well these days with that. I believe those who want should be free to pray and read the Bible between classes – or before a test. Inspirational messages should be appropriate and allowed to be posted. I mean come on, the YMCA has done this for years and no one seems to be getting upset. In the military we’re allowed to pray and read the Bible when it doesn’t interfere with our duties. But then, I’m more than willing to stand up to anyone who tells me I can’t, and I have. It’s my right, I don’t force it on anybody.
For every “PRO” there must be a “CON” consequently we need the “good” to identify the “bad” and the “bad” to know what is “bad!” but it takes the majority to determine which is acceptable for most. When we try to please everyone individually our laws, our entire existence becomes a quagmire of laws that make no sense for anyone and chaos reigns.
Who is paying for schools? It sure as hell is NOT the government! Citizens should be able to put in schools what they want as long as it isn’t vulgar.
It is unfortunate that our political leaders, judiciary, and population as a whole, cannot see that you “cannot legislate morality or common sense”. It simply backfires and alienates. Our society will degrade in proportion to the demise of simple morality and common sense.
when Obama was president I attended a program of a young relative at his elementary school. As I entered the school, there was a vey huge poster of barrack Obama like he was God. It reminded me of the pictures of Hitler. Evidently the school worshipped him and expected the students to also. I am sure that you have heard this a thousand times, but this country was founded on Christian principals that have been chipped at, distorted and destroyed. Christianity never forces anyone to accept the religion, but has tried to influence what is right. The Ten Commandments definitely have a place in the school above political people. The Bible should have NEVER been taken out of our schools and replaced by huge photographs of someone you may or may not agree with.
keep separation of church and state
I wasn’t raised in a religious household and don’t attend church now. However, I support the inclusion of the principles of “religion” in life, which would include schools. The problem is, America has become such an interfaith country with all the immigrants that if we include Christianity, don’t we then need to include Islam, the Torah, Buddhism..yes, America was founded by Christians and they are still a majority (last time I checked). Do I think younger children would benefit from earlier instruction into the principles of moral and ethical behavior, sure. Maybe a wanna be gangbanger would NOT join a gang and start committing crimes if he were taught more right from wrong. Who knows. But, the evangelical Christians of America need to decide if there is enough time in a school day to teach ALL the religious faiths. Don’t think there is. And all the walls would soon be filled with various religious statements from all the religions. Gotta think this through.
Sorry but I personally believe religion has no more place in a classroom then CRT, DEI, or gender-reassignment does. Classrooms should be for learning not praying; that’s what church, synagogue, or mosques are for! (I do not include holiday displays… all kids get Easter & Christmas breaks so its inclusive & appropriate for the season)