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I hope our resident Ivy League law school professor and former Supreme Court clerk will weigh in on this one. Supreme Court decisions in the last two years have elevated the rights of states, based on the 10th Amendment.
Current Supreme Court precedent on religion cases is based on earlier Courts applying the 14th Amendment to the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment... and preventing individual states from doing with the Bill of Rights merely prevents Congress from doing. The 14th Amendment says, in part:
"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
The 10th Amendment?:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
The Dobbs abortion decision returned to "the people and their elected representatives" what the Court formerly took away from them.
Up to then, this Louisiana case would have been a no-brainer. The 1st Amendment says that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. Fold in the 14th Amendment. That means that no state can do it either.
But, now? "The people and their elected representatives" in Louisiana require a summary of the Ten Commandments... not the actual Ten Commandments... to appear in public school classrooms.
This will get to the Supreme Court in a few years. Hoe will it decide?
Needless to say, pb has an opinion.
