Nine Louisiana families filed a federal lawsuit Monday against their state’s education department and their local school boards challenging the constitutionality of a radical new law requiring that the Ten Commandments be displayed in public school classrooms.
The lawsuit was unveiled less than a week after Louisiana’s Gov. Jeff Landry put pen to paper and made his state the first in the country to require all public schools to display the Christian commandments in classrooms since the Supreme Court declared such a requirement unconstitutional more than 40 years ago.
The families, who are Jewish, Christian, Unitarian Universalist and nonreligious, alleged in court papers filed in the U.S. District Court, Middle District of Louisiana, that the new law “substantially interferes with and burdens” the parents’ First Amendment right to raise their kids in whatever religion they want.
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