Louisiana AG to Newsmax: Ten Commandments Law 'Acknowledges Supreme Court Precedent'

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill told Newsmax on Friday that there’s nothing "facially unconstitutional about" the state’s new law mandating that public school classrooms display copies of the Ten Commandments.

The law, which was signed by the governor earlier this week, "can be constitutionally applied," Murrill said on "National Report."

"I think that there's certainly been a lot of pushback against taking out any kind of morality from our public school system. And so I think it's partly a response to that, but it's also a response to Supreme Court precedent that permits the Ten Commandments to be posted within certain contexts. And I think our legislature is trying to thread that needle."

When asked about a planned lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union that contends the law violates the First Amendment, Murrill said that the law was written with Supreme Court precedent in mind.

In 1980, the Court ruled in the case Stone v. Graham that a Kentucky law requiring that school officials post a copy of the Ten Commandments in every public classroom violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment, noting at the time that the Kentucky law failed to pass the "Lemon test" that the Court used for decades to determine whether legislation ran afoul of the clause.

Murrill said the Louisiana "law itself acknowledges Supreme Court precedent, directs that there be a context statement, and that part of it hasn't been written yet."

She continued, "Some of this still has to play out in terms of how the law is actually applied, I certainly plan to give some guidance to our school system so that they will know where the lines kind of are drawn under current Supreme Court precedent."

Murrill added, "We'll wait and see if we get sued."

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