A federal appeals court in New Orleans has temporarily narrowed the scope of a ruling that struck down a Louisiana law requiring public schools to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms, allowing the law to be implemented in the vast majority of the state’s school districts.
The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued an administrative stay on Nov. 15, temporarily halting a provision requiring state education officials to inform all 72 school districts that the law was invalidated. This means that the legal requirement to post the Ten Commandments in classrooms is now blocked in the five Louisiana school districts involved in the lawsuit and may be implemented in the remaining 67, pending appeal.
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill hailed the decision, which came in response to an emergency motion filed by state attorneys, who argued that U.S. District Judge John deGravelles exceeded his authority with his Nov. 12 ruling, which mandated statewide notification of the law’s unconstitutionality.
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“The Fifth Circuit grants our motion to BLOCK the district court’s attempt to enjoin the Ten Commandments law statewide. I look forward to immediately working with all of our school boards who are not involved in this lawsuit to implement the law soon,” Murrill said in a post on X.
State attorneys plan to appeal the entirety of deGravelles’s order, which was still left intact for five school districts named in the lawsuit.
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