LOUISANNA IS LOOKING FOR A LOOP HOLE......

isiana consider mandating religious prayer in schools after it became the first state to require that the Ten Commandments be posted in every public school and university classroom?
Will Lou
Republican Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry was asked specifically if he believes organized prayer should be allowed in schools during a Monday news conference in which he and Republican Attorney General Liz Murrill outlined their constitutional court defense of the new Ten Commandments law.

Landry didn't say specifically whether he would endorse or sign a bill to allow prayer in schools if it were passed by the Legislature, but he did say students "don't leave their First Amendment rights at the doors of school houses when they go in there."

"If we start from a moral perspective, maybe we'd have more peace in our society," he said.

Landry noted that public prayer is practiced by elected governing bodies like Congress and the state Legislature.

"Every morning the U.S. House is opened for business with a prayer, and yet we deny — our government in some fashion denies our citizens the right to appreciate the very things that they elected those to the highest offices or appointed to the highest offices can endorse," said Landry, a former congressman.

These debates in Louisiana are happening across the country, where authorities in Republican-led states are confidently taking on constitutional protections that have previously banned religious instruction and prayer from public education.

Civil rights advocates are pushing back, saying these mandates violate students' rights, and have sued in federal court seeking to block Louisiana's new Ten Commandments law.

During this moment in American history, a legal challenge to one of these measures in the U.S. Supreme Court could land differently than in other eras, said Ira C. Lupu, a professor at George Washington University School of Law who has written on religion in the First Amendment. The new policies, he said, have a better shot at prevailing before the court's conservative majority.

None of these mandates have advanced to that stage yet.

The Supreme Court ruled in two separate cases in the 1960s that school-sponsored prayer and religious teaching in school violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which says the federal government cannot make laws governing the "establishment of religion" or prohibiting "the free exercise thereof."

The U.S. Department of Education has interpreted that to mean that public schools "may not provide religious instruction" in a devotional manner or "prescribe prayers to be recited by students or by school authorities."

If educators teach about religion as an academic subject, they must promote religious liberty and respect all religious views, including the views of those who don't believe, the federal agency says.

More:Louisiana AG asks judge to dismiss lawsuit to block Ten Commandments in classrooms


s tGreg Hilburn covers Louisiana politics for the USA Today Network. Follow him on Twitter @GregHilburn1.

HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO STATE.....the religious right is pushing boundaries.....LOUISANNA TRIED THIS ONCE BACK IN 2018, it did not pass. AGAIN, IF U IGNORE THE FACTS, U RISK LOSING YOUR FREEDOM.... (but according to some it is all hyperbole that HA is posting,
I WILL GET THE LAST I TOLD U SO....WAIT FOR IT.

What would be so wrong about having an invited guest give an invocation at the start of the school day HA? Happens all the time in government institutions, gatherings and what not.

The courts banned religion in schools, except for secularism.

No, they banned religious instruction in public schools, they banned a requirement to require participation in a prayer designated by a State.

The federal government, and by incorporation doctrine, the State governments, may not be hostile to religion upon school grounds anymore than they may establish a particular religion within the schools. A school could, for instance, create a non-denominational chapel at a public school in the same manner as they have in the buildings used by Congress at the federal level, or a public airport, or a publicly operated hospital so the students who wished to do so would have a place at school to pray. I might even go so far as to say that if such a space were requested to be established, the public school would be required to provide it for the students as an accommodation, just as they would for a student who is Muslim who requests a place at the school to pray in accordance with their religious beliefs. Accommodating religious expression is not the same as establishing a specific religious doctrine that all must follow, which is what is forbidden.