Court blocks Louisiana law requiring schools to post Ten Commandments in classrooms
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A panel of three federal appellate judges has ruled that a Louisiana law requiring the Ten Commandments to be posted in each of the state's public school classrooms is unconstitutional.
The ruling on Friday marked a major win for civil liberties groups who say the mandate violates the separation of church and state, and that the poster-sized displays would isolate students — especially those who are not Christian.
The mandate has been touted by Republicans, including President Donald Trump, and marks one of the latest pushes by conservatives to incorporate religion into classrooms. Backers of the law argue the Ten Commandments belong in classrooms because they are historical and part of the foundation of U.S. law.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' order stems from a lawsuit filed last year by parents of Louisiana school children from various religious backgrounds, who said the law violates First Amendment language guaranteeing religious liberty and forbidding government establishment of religion.
The mandate was signed into law last June by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry.
The court's ruling backs an order issued last fall by U.S. District Judge John deGravelles, who declared the mandate unconstitutional and ordered state education officials not to take steps to enforce it and to notify all local school boards in the state of his decision.
Law experts have long said they expect the Louisiana case to make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, testing the conservative court on the issue of religion and government.
In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a similar Kentucky law violated the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which says Congress can 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion.' The high court found that the law had no secular purpose but served a plainly religious purpose.
In 2005, the Supreme Court held that such displays in a pair of Kentucky courthouses violated the Constitution. At the same time, the court upheld a Ten Commandments marker on the grounds of the Texas state Capitol in Austin.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Bloomberg
16 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Pakistan Backs Trump for Nobel Peace Prize He's Long Craved
Pakistan said it will nominate US President Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, a move that may have as much to do with annoying rival India as it does with building stronger ties to Washington. The recommendation is being made for Trump's 'decisive intervention and pivotal leadership during the recent India-Pakistan crisis,' according to a social media post on Saturday by Pakistan's government.
26 minutes ago
Supreme Court rejects toy company's push for a quick decision on Trump's tariffs
WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court on Friday rejected a push from an Illinois toy company asking for a quick decision on the legality of President Donald Trump's tariffs. Learning Resources Inc. wanted the justices to take up the case soon, rather than let it continue to play out in lower courts. The company argues the tariffs and uncertainty are having a 'massive impact' on businesses around the country and the issue needs swift attention from the nation's highest court. The justices didn't explain their reasoning in the brief order rebuffing the motion to fast-track the issue, but the Supreme Court is typically reluctant to take up cases before lower courts have decided. An appeals court is set to hear the case in late July. The company argues that the Republican president illegally imposed tariffs under an emergency powers law, bypassing Congress. It won an early victory in a lower court, but the order is on hold as an appeals court considers a similar ruling putting a broader block on Trump's tariffs. The appeals court has allowed Trump to continue collecting tariffs under the emergency powers law for now. The Trump administration has defended the tariffs by arguing that the emergency powers law gives the president the authority to regulate imports during national emergencies and that the country's longtime trade deficit qualifies as a national emergency.
Newsweek
30 minutes ago
- Newsweek
How Animal Testing in US Could Be Transformed Under Trump
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Millions of animals each year are killed in U.S. laboratories as part of medical training and chemical, food, drug and cosmetic testing, according to the non-profit animal rights organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). For many animals held captive for research, including a huge range of species from dogs, cats and hamsters to elephants, dolphins and many other species, pain is "not minimized," U.S. Department of Agriculture data shows. The issue of animal testing is something most Americans agree on: it needs to change and gradually be stopped. A Morning Consult poll conducted at the end of last year found that 80 percent of the 2,205 participants either agreed or strongly agreed with the statement: "The US government should commit to a plan to phase out experiments on animals." Since President Donald Trump began his second term, his administration has been making moves to transform and reduce animal testing in country, although the question remains as to whether it will be enough to spare many more animals from pain and suffering this year. Animal Testing In US Could Be Transformed Animal Testing In US Could Be Transformed Photo-illustration by Newsweek/Getty/Canva What Is The Trump Administration Doing About It? There have been various steps taken in different federal agencies to tackle the issue of animal testing since Trump was sworn in on January 20. In April, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced it was "taking a groundbreaking step to advance public health by replacing animal testing in the development of monoclonal antibody therapies and other drugs with more effective, human-relevant methods." The FDA said that its animal testing requirement will be "reduced, refined, or potentially replaced" with a range of approaches, including artificial intelligence-based models, known as New Approach Methodologies or NAMs data. A Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) official told Newsweek: "The agency is paving the way for faster, safer, and more cost-effective treatments for American patients. "As we restore the agency's commitment to gold-standard science and integrity, this shift will help accelerate cures, lower drug prices, and reaffirm U.S. leadership in ethical, modern science." The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced it was "adopting a new initiative to expand innovative, human-based science while reducing animal use in research," in alignment with the FDA's initiative. The agency said that while "traditional animal models continue to be vital to advancing scientific knowledge," new and emerging technologies could act as alternative methods, either alone or in combination with animal models. The NIH Office of Extramural Research told Newsweek it was "committed to transparently assessing where animal use can be reduced or eliminated by transitioning to [new approach methodologies (NAMs)]." "Areas where research using animals is currently necessary represent high-priority opportunities for investment in NAMs," the agency added. It added that it will "further its efforts to coordinate agency-wide efforts to develop, validate, and scale the use of NAMs across the agency's biomedical research portfolio and facilitate interagency coordination and regulatory translation for public health protection." During Trump's first term, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) signed a directive to "prioritize efforts to reduce animal testing and committed to reducing testing on mammals by 30 percent by 2025 and to eliminate it completely by 2035," an EPA spokesperson told Newsweek. Although, the spokesperson added: "the Biden Administration halted progress on these efforts by delaying compliance deadlines." As a member of the House, Lee Zeldin, the EPA's current administrator, co-sponsored various bills during Trump's first term regarding animal cruelty, covering issues such as phasing out animal-based testing for cosmetic products; ending taxpayer funding for painful experiments on dogs at the Department of Veteran Affairs; empowering federal law enforcement to prosecute animal abuse cases that cross state lines; and others, the spokesperson said. What The Experts Think Needs To Be Done The Trump administration's efforts to tackle the issue of animal testing appear to be a step in the right direction, according to experts who spoke with Newsweek. "I was pleasantly surprised and quite frankly a bit shocked to read the simultaneous announcements by the NIH and the FDA regarding a new emphasis on the use of alternatives to animals," Jeffrey Morgan, a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at Brown University in Rhode Island, told Newsweek. Morgan, who is also the director of the Center for Alternatives to Animals in Testing at Brown University, said that both agencies are moving together in the same direction on the issue "sends a unified and very powerful message to the research and biotech communities." He added that the announcements showed "a major acknowledgement of the limitations of the use of animals in research and testing." "What is especially exciting is that the NIH announcement will encourage the entry of new investigators into the field, further accelerating innovation in alternatives with exciting impacts for both discovery and applied research across all diseases," he said. He added that the FDA announcement and its emphasis on a new regulatory science that embraces data from alternatives was "equally exciting." "The demands of this new regulatory science will likewise accelerate innovation because it will establish the much-needed regulatory framework for the rigorous evaluation of data from alternatives," he said. While the administration's initiatives to shift research away from animal testing is heading in the right direction, its policies are "overdue," Dr. Thomas Hartung, a professor in the department of environmental health and engineering at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Maryland, told Newsweek. "The animal tests for safety were introduced more than 50 years ago. There is no other area of science where we do not adapt to scientific progress," he said. Hartung added that animal "testing takes too long and is too expensive to really provide the safety consumers want." He said that running animal tests for new chemicals can cost millions and take years in some cases. "Nobody can wait that long, even if they can afford the testing costs," he said. Hartung also believes the shifts in the industry to reduce animal testing have been "coming for a while," as over the last two decades, America's opposition to animal use in medical research has been increasing. "The alignment of FDA and NIH really makes the difference now, which I think is evidence of a strong relationship of their leaderships," he said. Yet in order to make a real difference, Hartung said clear deadlines are key to show that "this is not just lip service." He also said that he thought "the transformative nature of artificial intelligence in this field is not fully acknowledged." "We also need an objective framework for change to better science, such as the evidence-based toxicology approach," he said.
