NEW ORLEANS– Lawyers for the state of Louisiana on Wednesday asked a federal appeals court to immediately block a judge’s ruling ordering education officials to tell all local districts that a law requiring schools to post the Ten Commandments in classrooms is unconstitutional.
U.S. District Judge John deGravelles in Baton Rouge declared the law “unconstitutional on its face.” long decision Tuesday and ordered education officials to notify the state’s 72 local school boards of that fact.
The state plans to appeal DeGravelles’ entire order, but the emergency appeal to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals focuses on just one aspect of it. State attorneys say the judge exceeded his authority when he ordered that all local school boards be notified of his findings because only five districts are named as defendants in a legal challenge to the law.
Those districts are in East Baton Rouge, Livingston, St. Tammany, Orleans and Vernon parishes.
Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley and the state education board are also defendants in the lawsuit and were ordered by deGravelles not to take steps to implement the law.
But the state argues that because officials have no oversight power over local, elected school boards, the order only applies to the five boards.
The law was passed this year by the Republican-dominated Legislature and signed into law by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry in June.
In Tuesday’s ruling, deGravelles said the law has an “overtly religious” purpose and rejected state officials’ claims that the government can mandate the posting of the Ten Commandments because they have historical significance to the foundation of U.S. law.
His opinion noted that no other foundational documents, such as the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, need to be posted.
Attorney General Elizabeth Murrill, a Republican ally of Landry, said Tuesday that the state disagrees with DeGravelles’ findings.