US appeals court paves way for display of Ten Commandments in Louisiana schools

A US appeals court has cleared the way for a Louisiana law requiring poster-sized displays of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms to take effect.

The 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals votes 12-6 to lift a block that a lower court first placed on the law in 2024. In the opinion released yesterday, the court says it was too early to make a judgment call on the constitutionality of the law.

That’s partly because it’s not yet clear how prominently schools may display the religious text, if teachers will refer to the Ten Commandments during classes, or if other texts like the Mayflower Compact or the Declaration of Independence will also be displayed, the majority opinion said.

Without those sorts of details, the panel decided it did not have enough information to weigh any First Amendment issues that might arise from the law. In other words, there aren’t enough facts available to “permit judicial judgment rather than speculation,” the majority writes in the opinion.

In a concurring opinion, Circuit Judge James Ho, an appointee of Republican US President Donald Trump, writes that the law “is not just constitutional — it affirms our nation’s highest and most noble traditions.”