Commandments About Commandments

Stone v. Graham, 449 U.S. 39 (1980), holds:

“Posting of religious texts on the wall  serves no such educational function. If the posted copies of the Ten Commandments are to have any effect at all, it will be to induce the schoolchildren to read, meditate upon, perhaps to venerate and obey, the Commandments. However desirable this might be as a matter of private devotion, it is not a permissible state objective under the Establishment Clause.“

Consistent with that precedent, in Roake v Brumley, a Fifth Circuit panel affirmed an injunction against a Louisiana law requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in school classrooms, Nevertheless, the full Court has voted to take the case en banc (interestingly, a somewhat overheated effort to get immediate en banc review of this case was rejected 14-3 soon after the trial court’s ruling was appealed.