In Dier v. Landry, (ED LA, April 22, 2026), a Louisiana federal district court dismissed on ripeness grounds a school teacher's challenge to Louisiana's requirement that a copy of the Ten Commandments be posted in every public-school classroom. The court said in part:
... [N]either this Court nor the parties can determine at this time how any particular school governing authority will implement its H.B. 71 displays. Lacking the facts and context of the implemented displays, the Court cannot, on the present record, determine whether any display would violate the Establishment Clause. Second, Plaintiff’s attempt to frame his suit as a facial challenge does not obviate the need for a well-developed factual record.....
... In Roake, the Fifth Circuit noted that the Ten Commandments’ “dual character” of having both religious and historical significance “forecloses any categorical rule against their display on public property” and that the constitutionality of such a display “turns on ‘the context of the display’ and ‘how the text is used.’...
Whether a particular teacher will be required to physically post, display, or otherwise interact with an H.B. 71 display, or whether that task will fall to administrators or other staff, is left fully to the discretion of each governing authority.... Here, Plaintiff faces no statutory obligation of any kind, and his alleged injury from being personally “required to display” the Ten Commandments rests on a chain of assumptions about how Benjamin Franklin High School’s governing authority will choose to implement the Act....
This also renders Plaintiff’s compelled-speech theory especially speculative at this point.
