The recent law in Louisiana that requires school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments, a religious text from the Jewish and Christian traditions, has reminded people of a 1980 case that declared a similar law unconstitutional, Education Week reported.
In the late summer of 1980, the Supreme Court heard an important appeal from the Kentucky Supreme Court regarding a law in the state that required public schools to display the Ten Commandments in their classrooms.
The Kentucky Supreme Court said this law was okay, but not everybody agreed. They asked the US Supreme Court to review the case, called Stone v Graham. Justice William J Brennan Jr, a strong advocate for liberal ideas on the Supreme Court, played a key role in the decision. Instead of a full debate, the Court decided to issue a quick decision, known as a “summary reversal,” because justices believed the Kentucky court had made a big mistake based on past legal precedents.
Justice Brennan wrote that putting up the Ten Commandments in schools was mainly a religious act. He said it wasn’t about teaching history or other subjects, which would be okay. Some other justices disagreed, saying the Commandments also had a historical influence on laws.
The Supreme Court ultimately issued a 5-4 decision that declared the Kentucky law to be in violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. The petitioners, parents led by Sydell Stone, argued that the law had no secular purpose, was religious in nature, and concerned matters like worship and the Sabbath, particularly the first three (or four, in some translations) commandments.
The court agreed, finding that the law gave preference to a particular creed and violated the separation of church and state. The court also noted that the Ten Commandments are sacred texts in both Christianity and Judaism and that no legislative statement of secular purpose could change that fact.
Therefore, the Kentucky law wasn’t right under the Constitution. This decision set a firm rule for similar cases in the future, such as Louisiana’s new law, and the debate has once again come to the forefront of American politics. People who think this new law is wrong use the Stone v Graham case to argue their point, saying schools shouldn’t favor one religion over others.
It’s a complex issue, and the Supreme Court recently gutted the rule on which Stone v Graham was based. But it shows how important the rules about religion in schools are in our country’s legal system. My hope is that the justices honor those who have come before them in our great history.
