They’re having a hearing this morning in New Orleans, in front of federal judge John DeGravelles, about Louisiana’s new law requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments in the state’s public-school classrooms…

A federal judge on Monday will hear arguments on whether he should temporarily block a new Louisiana law requiring that the Ten Commandments be displayed in every public school classroom by Jan. 1.

The hearing on that and other issues in a pending lawsuit challenging the new law is expected to last all day. It’s unclear when U.S. District Judge John W. deGravelles will rule.

Opponents say the law is an unconstitutional violation of separation of church and state and that the display will isolate students, especially those who are not Christian. Proponents argue the measure is not solely religious, but has historical significance to the foundation of U.S. law. Louisiana, a reliably Republican state that is ensconced in the Bible Belt, is the only state with such a requirement.

In June, parents of Louisiana public school children, with various religious backgrounds, filed the lawsuit arguing that the legislation violates First Amendment language forbidding government establishment of religion and guaranteeing religious liberty.

Gov. Jeff Landry, a conservative Republican who has backed the new law, for months has said that he looks forward to defending the mandate in court. When asked during an August press conference what he would say to parents who are upset about the Ten Commandments being displayed in their child’s classroom, he replied: “If those posters are in school and they (parents) find them so vulgar, just tell the child not to look at it.”

The typical reaction to this can be found in X posts like this one…

There are quotes from several #LaLege lawmakers that make it clear this is an endorsement of religion, not a history project, no matter what these fools say. It’s also a publicity stunt for Jeff Landry. #LaEd #NOLAed #LaGov https://t.co/ilSgvQeuq4

— Peter C. Cook (@petercook) October 21, 2024

That’s an exceptionally shallow take which our stupid news media has conditioned people to have, though the implications of this are far, far larger than some “publicity stunt” or whether the state of Louisiana is “endorsing religion.”

It’s almost certainly true that Louisiana is endorsing religion, though the woke atheist mob who tears their clothing over the idea that the Judeo-Christian moral teachings on which our society is based might get an airing in the state’s government schools isn’t doing so because it wants no religion in those spaces. Quite the contrary. What they want is their religion taught. They want the religion of climate change, third wave feminism and transgender ideology, among other catechisms based in much less history and science than is Christianity.

Attorney General Liz Murrill shows just how idiotic all of this is…

Yes, it's true – Moses and the Ten Commandments are found throughout the U.S. Supreme Court building. Shocking 'undercover exposé.' I recommend everyone visit this great building and educate themselves on our nation's history and laws! @lawindsor #lalege pic.twitter.com/NlV88a0ntz

— Attorney General Liz Murrill (@AGLizMurrill) October 16, 2024

And as we’ve written here at The Hayride, the Supreme Court is just about ready to throw away the Lemon test, which was the old leftist framework through which Christianity was banned from public school classrooms in one of the most egregious departures from American tradition we’ve had. That case about the football coach in Washington who was fired because he would pray at the 50-yard line after his team’s games was a big turning point in jurisprudence on this topic.

And Louisiana’s Ten Commandments law gives the Court another bite at that apple at a time when it’s quite possible the Supremes will do with religion in schools what they did with abortion; namely, to put it back in the realm of state and local governments so the people can decide if they want schoolkids to learn Christian, or Judeo-Christian, morality in the schools.

The Ten Commandments were ubiquitous within (and without) the confines of American education for hundreds of years, from before the nation’s founding to practically five minutes ago. It was a Supreme Court decision in 1980 which invalidated a Kentucky Ten Commandments law as an “establishment” of religion.

That was Stone v. Graham, and in that case the Court’s majority used something called the Lemon test, which was a formulation it had laid down in a prior case, Lemon v. Kurtzman. The Lemon test has three parts…

1. Secular Purpose: The government action or law must have a legitimate secular purpose. In other words, the purpose must be unrelated to the advancement or inhibition of religion.
2. Primary Effect: The government action or law must not have the primary effect of advancing or inhibiting religion. The court must consider whether the action or law has a neutral or secular effect.
3. Excessive Entanglement: The government action or law must not result in an excessive entanglement between government and religion. This includes situations where the government is too closely involved with religious institutions or activities.

In Stone v. Graham, the Court found the Kentucky law lacked a legitimate secular purpose.

William Brennan wrote that opinion for the Supreme Court’s majority. William Brennan was about as far-left a jurist as you could find in the 20th century, and he’s responsible for a huge swath of the idiotic precedents the Court set in the 1960’s and 1970’s.

The current majority of the Supreme Court has very, very little resemblance to, and not quite much more respect for, the ideological positions espoused by Brennan.

A case from two years ago, Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, involved a high school football coach in Washington State who took to midfield to pray after games. He got fired for his trouble and sued. According to the Lemon test, having school employees praying would be a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. But the Court ruled that the Lemon test doesn’t apply to an individual’s conduct who might be a school employee.

This Ten Commandments bill might come off as a window-dressing cultural thing. But it’s a bit more than that. Landry and the legislators aren’t simply pandering to the Religious Right here, despite the fact that’s how the bill and its signing have been portrayed in the legacy corporate media.

This is an attack on the Brennan Court. It’s a frontal assault on Stone v. Graham and Brennan’s ludicrous contention that the document which established the basis of our civilization’s moral code has no secular purpose.

The guess is that out of John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch we’d find five justices willing to throw Stone v. Graham out as nonsense.

And if that’s true, what this new law would do would be to help reset the relationship between the states, who are supposed to be sovereign under our constitution, and an obnoxious federal government dominated by busybody leftists who disparage the traditions the country is founded on.

We’re a ways off from the Supreme Court getting a crack at this case. DeGravelles is going to rule, and most think he’ll rule against the state, and then there will be an appeal to the Fifth Circuit, and that’ll probably go through both a three-judge panel and an en banc ruling, and then the Supremes might (and perhaps likely will) take up the case in a couple of years.

But very few people seem to recognize that this is about something far larger than posters of the Ten Commandments on the wall of some government middle school somewhere. It’s about whether the federal government has the power to impose its own atheistic moral standards on states where the majority of the people choose something else.

The bet Landry, Murrill and the Louisiana legislature is making is that the Supreme Court isn’t very keen on that idea. And they might just be right.