Louisiana AG Blasphemes Lin Manuel Miranda In Attempt To Make Forcing Religion On Kids Constitutional
AND WE WILL NOT STAND FOR THAT.
Back in June, the state of Louisiana passed a law (HB71) requiring that every classroom in every public and private school across the state put up ginormous posters of the King James version of the Ten Commandments, we can assume for the explicit purpose of trolling non-Christian (and non-Protestant Christian) children and making them feel unwelcome at the schools their parents taxes pay for.
Prior to signing the bill, Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry actually told attendees at a Republican fundraiser, โI canโt wait to be sued.โ
And that is just what happened. The parents of these children and fans of civil liberties immediately filed a lawsuit in hopes of keeping the blatantly unconstitutional posters the hell out of school classrooms.
But Landry and Louisiana AG Liz Merrill were prepared! Sort of! Because they came up with a whole bunch of trollish loopholes they think will make their obviously unconstitutional law constitutional โย and held a press conference to explain.
Merrill explained that the brief she filed against the lawsuit states that the plaintiffs have no case because they havenโt actually seen any of their religious displays and therefore cannot say they are unconstitutional.
The brief itself reads:
Plaintiffs allege that they โobject to, and will be harmed by, the religious displays mandated by [the law].โ Across more than 100 paragraphs of โFactual Allegations,โ however, the Complaint never mentions a single Defendant or a single H.B. 71 display. [โฆ] For good reason: No Plaintiff or their child has seen an H.B. 71 display. In fact, no one knows how any given school or officialโincluding Defendantsโwill implement H.B. 71, what any given H.B. 71 display will look like, or whether any given H.B. 71 display will pose a potential constitutional issue. As a result, the most Plaintiffs can speculate is that, by โimplementing H.B. 71,โ the named Defendants โwillโ violate Plaintiffsโ constitutional rights.
Again, we all know what the Ten Commandments are and that the goal of this law is the establishment of religion by the state.
If that argument falls through, Merrill explained that her next argument is that, in order to say that the law is unconstitutional, the defendants would have to prove that every possible way the Ten Commandments could hypothetically be displayed would be unconstitutional โ which, of course, makes no goddamn sense.
To illustrate her point, Merrill pointed to a bunch of workups of posters that she thinks could be constitutional, but which make no sense and take a variety of statements from a variety of people and Broadway shows out of context.
One particularly absurd poster places the Ten Commandments and a picture of Charlton Heston next to a summary of the song โTen Duel Commandmentsโ from Hamilton.
So, look โ I am obviously a very big fan of Hamilton, but even aside from the โItโs still not constitutional!โ of it all, Iโm not sure this is a very good idea. You know, what with our whole mass shooting problem and all. Like, these people really want to put the rules for a gun fight on the walls of a school, literally next to the Ten Commandments? What the hell are they thinking?
Another poster featured in the conference has already brought the ire of Ruth Bader Ginsburgโs family, as it presents a quote from a paper she wrote in the 8th grade as though it were something she wrote as an adult Supreme Court Justice.
โThe use of my grandmotherโs image in Louisianaโs unconstitutional effort to display the Ten Commandments in public schools is misleading and an affront to her well-documented First Amendment jurisprudence,โ Clara Spera told Rolling Stone. โBy placing the quote next to an official Supreme Court portrait of her in judicial robes and a jabot, Louisiana is misleading the public by suggesting that Justice Ginsburg made the statement about the Ten Commandments being among the worldโs โfour great documentsโ while serving as a Supreme Court Justice.โ
Another poster highlighted โLegal Non-Profits In Actionโ and described the ACLUโs opposition to putting the Ten Commandments up in classrooms โ which, obviously theyโre busting balls here, because the ACLU is one of the groups suing their asses.
Another tried to compare the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.โs rules for non-violence to the Ten Commandments, because Moses was the first guy to do a top ten list and therefore every list of ten things inspired by him.
I am only half surprised that they did not include a still from the classic movie 10 Things I Hate About You. Although one poster that I have yet to actually see supposedly included a still from Mean Girls, with Rachel McAdams saying, โWhy are you so obsessed with me?โ which they supposedly conflate with how people are โobsessedโ with keeping the Ten Commandments out of public school classrooms. So weird!
Another was just like โHey! You know who does laws? Moses! Also, Congress! That is how these things are related. Also there is a marble relief portrait of Moses (supposedly, because no one knows what Moses looked like, you absolute weirdos) in Congress!โ
So constitutional!
Still another poster includes out-of-context quotes from the Supreme Court about the Ten Commandments.
One quote โ โThis Court has subscribed to the view that the Ten Commandments influenced the development of Western legal thoughtโ โ comes from Justice John Paul Stevensโ dissent in Van Order v. Perry, in which he writes the exact opposite of what is implied here.
Though this Court has subscribed to the view that the Ten Commandments influenced the development of Western legal thought, it has not officially endorsed the far more specific claim that the Ten Commandments played a significant role in the development of our Nationโs foundational documents (and the subsidiary implication that it has special relevance to Texas). Although it is perhaps an overstatement to characterize this latter proposition as โidiotic,โ [โฆ] as one Member of the plurality has done, at the very least the question is a matter of intense scholarly debate. [โฆ] Whatever the historical accuracy of the proposition, the District Court categorically rejected respondentsโ suggestion that the Stateโs actual purpose in displaying the Decalogue was to signify its influence on secular law and Texas institutions.
Another quote, from Justice David Souterโs dissent, suggests that there are ways a display of the Ten Commandments in a classroom could hypothetically not violate anyoneโs rights, but Iโm not sure the existence of a showtune titled โTen Duel Commandmentsโ hits the mark.
Landry, for his part, argued that the law is just democracy in action, that it is what the majority of people in Louisiana want and therefore is constitutionalย โ which is not actually how things work in this country.
โI did not know that the Ten Commandments was such a bad way for someone to live their life," Landry said. "I believe that the legislature was only following the will of the people of the state because when you look at the sheer votes that were cast in support of this bill, it was done with bipartisan support.โ
It is, of course, totally fine for someone to live their lives by the Ten Commandments. I would be the last person to say that anyone is required to covet anyone elseโs cattle or manservants. That being said, while we have democracy, we also have laws that protect minorities of all kinds, including religious minorities, from having their rights infringed upon by the majority.
โI think weโve forgotten in this country that democracy actually means majority rule,โ Landry continued. โWhen you elect people, you elect by majority. That majority gets to rule. That does not mean that if you donโt like something, you have a right to impose that which the majority likes.โ
He also proposed a solution for those who donโt like the posters โ tell their kids not to look at them.
โIf those posters are in school and they find them so vulgar, just tell the child not to look at it,โ he added.
Thatโs not how any of this works!
There are no out-of-context references that can make this obviously unconstitutional thing constitutional. There just arenโt โ and the only way to make it โconstitutionalโ is to change the Constitution to allow the establishment of religion. They are welcome to try that, although Iโm not so sure they can get enough of a โmajorityโ to support it.
https://x.com/SenSchumer/status/1820870134283587624
Erick Erickson: No Jews allowed at the top of the Democratic Party.
Chuck Schumer: News to me.
As a designer, I'm offended by these posters for different reasons.