Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry had a remarkably frivolous and flip response earlier this year to parents suing to stop his state's mandate that every public school – from kindergarten to college – display a Protestant Christian version of the Ten Commandments.
"Tell your child not to look at them," Landry said in August.
U.S. District Judge John W. deGravelles gave that notion the smackdown it deserved Tuesday when he issued a preliminary injunction, stopping the religious posters from being placed in schools. The Baton Rouge-based jurist called the law "coercive and inconsistent with the history of First Amendment and public education," because parents, by law, must send their kids to school in the state.
Liz Murrill, Louisiana's attorney general, vowed to "immediately appeal," calling this "far from over."
And, of course, that was always the point here. This isn't about bolstering education in Louisiana. It's creeping Christian nationalism in search of judges who will undo American rights.
Landry, Murrill and their pals trying to force religion down the throats of children in a way that obviously violates the U.S. Constitution are oh so eager to get the the ultraconservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals and then onto the hard-right-controlled U.S. Supreme........