{"id":2283042,"date":"2024-06-25T08:19:01","date_gmt":"2024-06-25T12:19:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/return-the-ten-commandments-to-the-public-square\/"},"modified":"2024-06-25T08:23:02","modified_gmt":"2024-06-25T12:23:02","slug":"return-the-ten-commandments-to-the-public-square","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/return-the-ten-commandments-to-the-public-square\/","title":{"rendered":"Return The Ten Commandments To The Public Square"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">16<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Freturn-the-ten-commandments-to-the-public-square%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2283042&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry recently signed a bill requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every \u200cclassroom\u200b in the state, citing the need to respect the rule\u200b of law starting from the original lawgiver, Moses. This move has sparked outrage among liberals and faced\u200d immediate criticism from the ACLU, which considers it a breach of the constitutional separation of church and state.<\/p>\n<p>The law is viewed by critics\u2062 like David French, writing for The New\u200d York Times, as a defiance of the Supreme Court&#8217;s precedent \u2063established by the 1980 ruling in \u200bStone v. Graham, \u2062which was based on the Lemon test from Lemon v. Kurtzman\u2062 (1971). This test was widely used\u200b to decide if governmental actions violated the establishment clause of the First \u2063Amendment, often leading to censorship of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/supreme-court-rules-in-favor-of-student-punished-for-religious-speech\/\" title=\"Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Student Punished for Religious Speech\">religious speech<\/a> in public settings.<\/p>\n<p>However,\u200b the Supreme Court overturned the Lemon test in June 2022 \u200bin Kennedy v. Bremerton\u200c School District, invalidating it as historically\u2063 ungrounded and \u200bincorrectly establishing a conflict among the clauses of the First Amendment. Justice Neil Gorsuch argued \u200cthat the clauses of the First\u2063 Amendment work complementarily rather\u2062 than in conflict, suggesting a more historical interpretation of the establishment clause.<\/p>\n<p>With the Lemon test no longer applicable, there \u2063has been a renewed push to reintroduce the Ten Commandments and other <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/house-democrat-suggests-stripping-catholic-church-of-tax-exempt-status-if-biden-denied-communion\/\" title=\"House Democrat Suggests Stripping Catholic Church Of Tax-Exempt Status If Biden Denied Communion\">religious displays<\/a> in public settings, with proponents referencing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/2a-victory-judge-rules-federal-ban-on-handgun-sales-to-18-to-20-year-olds-unconstitutional\/\" title=\"Federal ban on handgun sales to 18- to 20-year-olds ruled unconstitutional\">historical practices<\/a> and understandings. This development indicates a significant shift in\u200b the interpretation of the First Amendment regarding religious displays in public\u2062 spaces.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\u201cIf you want to respect the rule of law, you\u2019ve got to start from the original lawgiver, which was Moses.\u201d So said Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry when he signed a bill to require the Ten Commandments to be posted in every classroom in the state.<\/p>\n<p>The Louisiana law has caused outrage from the left and the liberal intelligentsia. The ACLU has already announced it will be challenging the law in court as an unconstitutional establishment of religion. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/06\/18\/opinion\/ten-commandments-classroom-louisiana.html\">David French<\/a> argued in The New York Times that rather than respecting the rule of law, Landry is defying it because the Supreme Court already ruled on the issue in <em>Stone v. Graham<\/em> in 1980. \u201cTo teach respect for the rule of law, he\u2019s defying the Supreme Court?\u201d French asked incredulously. <\/p>\n<p>What French failed to mention is that in the <em>Stone<\/em> decision, the court based its ruling on the three-part \u201c<em>Lemon<\/em> test,\u201d which was used for decades by the Supreme Court to determine whether actions violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment. But in June of 2022, the United States Supreme Court, in <em>Kennedy v. Bremerton School District<\/em>, held that the standard in the 1971 case of <em>Lemon v. Kurtzman<\/em>, long criticized by many, was in error and put the final nail in its coffin. <\/p>\n<p>The <em>Lemon<\/em> test had served to turn courts into de facto censors of any form of arguably religious speech or display in the public sphere, including displays of the Ten Commandments, nativity scenes and menorahs, and other displays, in hundreds of cases over the last 53 years. <\/p>\n<p>Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing the majority opinion for the court in the <em>Kennedy<\/em> case, examined the preexisting <em>Lemon<\/em> test that set the standard, in part, that the establishment clause would be violated whenever a \u201creasonable observer\u201d could conclude that the government had \u201cendorsed\u201d religion. That analysis, made up by the 1971 court, was completely without any historical basis (i.e., unprecedented either in case law or in history) and was outside the plain words of the First Amendment. <\/p>\n<p>Besides the <em>Lemon<\/em> test being completely without precedent, Gorsuch revealed that it had been used to create a conflict between the clauses of the First Amendment. Utilizing <em>Lemon<\/em> as a \u201cvise between the Establishment Clause on one side and the Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses on the other\u201d often caused courts to rule that free-speech and free-exercise cases had to yield to the establishment clause. Gorsuch made clear that, in the <a href=\"https:\/\/supreme.justia.com\/cases\/federal\/us\/597\/21-418\/#tab-opinion-4601251\">court\u2019s opinion<\/a>, such a conflict does not exist. \u201cBut how could that be? \u2026\u00a0A natural reading of [the First Amendment] would seem to suggest the Clauses have \u2018complementary\u2019 purposes, not warring ones where one Clause is always sure to prevail over the others.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In place of <em>Lemon<\/em> and the endorsement test, the Supreme Court instructed that the establishment clause must be interpreted \u201cby reference to historical practices and understandings.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Now that the <em>Lemon<\/em> test no longer controls, there is an organic drive among citizens to return the display of the Ten Commandments to public places. One of those efforts is in Alabama, where in 2003 the 11th Circuit ruled that a monument of the Ten Commandments had to be removed from the rotunda of the state judicial building because it violated the then-controlling <em>Lemon<\/em> standard. A <a href=\"https:\/\/www.restorethecommandments.com\/\">Restore the Commandments<\/a> petition has already gathered a multitude of signatures, calling for the display of the Ten Commandments in state buildings of each of the three branches of government.<\/p>\n<p>The Ten Commandments indisputably reflect the values that underlie our legal system and way of life. For example, the respect for life, reflected in the commandment, \u201cThou shalt not kill,\u201d is the basis for homicide laws. Respect for property, reflected in the commandments, \u201cThou shalt not steal,\u201d and, \u201cThou shalt not covet,\u201d provides a foundation for theft and property laws. Perjury and ethics law are reflections of the commandment to \u201cnot bear false witness.\u201d We even respect days of rest from the workweek, which consist of Sunday, the Christian holy day, and Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. The reasons for the establishment of the two<a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/president-trump-quietly-issued-another-executive-order-this-one-concerning-the-military\/\" title=\"President Trump Quietly Issued Another Executive Order \u2013 This One Concerning the Military\">-day weekend<\/a> in the early 1900s hark back to the commandment, \u201cRemember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy,\u201d <\/p>\n<p>The Ten Commandments remind us of our heritage and set forth principles on which the laws regulating behavior in daily life are based. There is no doubt the Ten Commandments are inextricably intertwined with our history, tradition, and laws. Historically, Ten Commandments displays were prevalent before 1971, when they began to be censored by the application of the <em>Lemon<\/em> test, which has now been overruled. Thus, \u201chistorical practices and understandings\u201d are consistent with a return of the Ten Commandments displays to public areas. <\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>      Donna Cude is a retired attorney who volunteers on special projects with Eagle Forum of Alabama. Kristen A. Ullman is the president of Eagle Forum and a graduate of the Catholic University Columbus School of Law. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry, upon signing a bill mandating the display of the Ten Commandments in every classroom, stated, &#8220;To respect the rule of law, start with the original lawgiver, Moses.&#8221; This law has sparked significant controversy and outrage among left-leaning groups<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3252,"featured_media":2283043,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Screenshot-2024-06-24-at-3.01.02%E2%80%AFPM-1024x644.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[3896,32580,10248,32581,32069],"class_list":["post-2283042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-debate","tag-public-square","tag-religion","tag-separation-of-church-and-state","tag-ten-commandments"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Screenshot-2024-06-24-at-3.01.02%E2%80%AFPM-1024x644.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2283042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3252"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2283042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2283042\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2283043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2283042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2283042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2283042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}