Arguments over Louisiana’s law requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every public school classroom are set for January, as a debate is ramping up around the country about the role religion can play in taxpayer-funded schools.

The Fifth Circuit Court this week kept in place a district court’s order halting the state from forcing every public classroom to display the Ten Commandments, while also expediting oral arguments for January 23. 

The law in question, signed by the governor earlier this year, aims to require any K-12 school or university that receives public funds, including private schools that accept state funds, to display the Ten Commandments in each building and classroom. Before signing it, Governor Landry said “I can’t wait to be sued,” anticipating the legal debate that is now unfolding in the federal courts. 

The coalition of civil liberties groups that are suing over the law, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Freedom From Religion Foundation, argue that it is a clear violation of the separation of church and state. 

“There is no longstanding tradition of permanently displaying the Ten Commandments in public-school classrooms in Louisiana or the United States more generally,” the lawsuit reads, citing a 1980 Supreme Court decision that struck down a similar statute in Kentucky, holding that the Ten Commandments were indeed religious documents. “The state’s main interest” in passing the law was “ to impose religious beliefs on public-school children, regardless of the harm to students and families,” the lawsuit states. 

The law’s backers have insisted that it is not a push for religious indoctrination but rather that the Ten Commandments are documents of historic significance and that the Ten Commandments serve as the “basis of all laws” in the state. President-elect Trump even weighed in on it in June, praising the state’s effort.

“I LOVE THE TEN COMMANDMENTS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS, PRIVATE SCHOOLS, AND MANY OTHER PLACES, FOR THAT MATTER,” he wrote on his TruthSocial account. He added that it might be the “FIRST MAJOR STEP IN THE REVIVAL OF RELIGION, WHICH IS DESPERATELY NEEDED, IN OUR COUNTRY.”

The battle over whether the Ten Commandments can be displayed in public classrooms comes as religious disputes in schools are ramping up across the country, as the Sun has been tracking. Texas’s State Board of Education this week signaled that it supports a statewide curriculum that includes biblical lessons, and Oklahoma’s state education department has ordered hundreds of “God Bless the USA” bibles supported by Trump. 

In Oklahoma, a first-of-its-kind effort to establish a taxpayer-funded Catholic charter school has reached the Supreme Court. Its backers have petitioned the high court to take up its case after it was blocked by the state’s court earlier this year. Oklahoma’s Supreme Court ruled that the school violated the state Constitution and federal Establishment clause, since taxpayer funds can’t be used to establish a religious institution. Supporters of the school say it is constitutional since the First Amendment requires that the government treat religious and nonreligious groups, including charter school programs, equally. 

In Louisiana’s Ten Commandments lawsuit, the Fifth Circuit Court “expedited oral arguments to the first available sitting, which is the week of January 20,” the state’s attorney general, Liz Murrill, said in a statement to the Sun. The state maintains that the court’s ruling applies to only the five school districts that were sued.

“There are more than sixty school boards that are not subject to the ruling of the court,” she says. “We look forward to continuing to defend this clearly constitutional law.”

The Sun reached out to the ACLU of Louisiana and an attorney with the Freedom From Religion Foundation for comment.