Judge pushed enactment of law to display religious code until November in response to parents’ suit

A federal judge blocked Louisiana from posting the Ten Commandments in public schools until November after parents from five districts sued the state over the law.

In a brief ruling Friday, district court judge John deGravelles said that the parents and the state agreed that the Ten Commandments will not be posted in any public school classroom before 15 November. The state also agreed to not “promulgate advice, rules or regulations regarding proper implementation of the challenged statute”.

The state’s Republican governor, Jeff Landry, signed into law last month a bill that requires all classrooms, in K-12 public schools and colleges, to have Ten Commandments posters with “large, easily readable font”. The state is also requiring a four-paragraph “context statement” about how the commandments “were a prominent part of American public education for almost three centuries”.

Soon after the bill was signed, a coalition of parents, supported by the American Civil Liberties Union and other civil rights groups, sued the state saying the bill violates the first amendment.