Due Course for the Ten 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.“

Unsurprisingly, then, the Fifth Circuit voted 14-3 on December 30 to reject an overly enthuastic application for en banc hearing in Roake v. Brumley – the challenge to a Louisiana law about display of the Ten Commandments that is flatly inconsistent with the above Supreme Court holding.