OPINION AND COMMENTARY Editorials and other Opinion content offer perspectives on issues important to our community and are independent from the work of our newsroom reporters. Opinion Bigstock Under current law, the newly adopted Louisiana statute requiring the Ten Commandments be posted in all public school classrooms is clearly unconstitutional. Unfortunately, however, the conservative Supreme Court’s recent decisions rejecting a clear separation of church and state leave the issue’s ultimate resolution uncertain. In Stone v. Graham, in 1980, the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional a Kentucky statute that required the posting of a copy of the Ten Commandments, purchased with private contributions, on the wall of each public classroom in the state. The court explained that posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms advances religion and has no secular purpose. Opinion “The preeminent purpose for posting the Ten Commandments on schoolroom walls is plainly religious in nature,” the court said at the time. “The Ten Commandments are undeniably a sacred text in the Jewish and Christian faiths, and no legislative recitation of a supposed secular purpose can blind us to that fact. “If the posted copies of the Ten Commandments are to have any effect at all, it will be to […]

Tags: