Ten Commandments Posters Go Up in Caddo Schools
Discover the controversy as Ten Commandments posters are displayed in Caddo Parish schools, following a federal court ruling.
A Louisiana teacher is asking the Supreme Court to weigh in on the state’s law requiring public schools to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms, calling it a topic of “exceptional and growing national importance.”
Christopher Dier, an AP U.S. history teacher in New Orleans who was named Louisiana’s Teacher of the Year in 2020, specifically asked the court to determine whether such requirements are permitted under the First Amendment, which bars the government from “respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
“The Establishment Clause forbids the government from commanding the placement of a single favored faith’s sacred text on the wall of every schoolroom as clearly as it would forbid the placement of that text on the wall of every courtroom,” Dier’s petition said.
The petition referenced similar measures in states including Texas, Arkansas and Alabama. Though others have also asked the nation’s highest court to weigh in on the matter, including a multifaith coalition of Texas families challenging that state’s law, the petition said Dier’s case “supplies the one perspective missing from every other case in this line: the teacher who must conduct public instruction beneath the State’s chosen religious text, on pain of losing the job he has held with distinction for 15 years.”
Dier told USA TODAY he was raised “vehemently Catholic” and said his challenge to the state’s law doesn’t stem from being against Christianity or religion more broadly. Rather, he said it’s about “pluralism, fairness, religious freedom (and) civil liberty.”
Andrew Tutt, an attorney with the firm Trial Lawyers for Justice, which is representing Dier, said Louisiana is asking Dier to “choose between his conscience and his career” and pointed to other requests for the Supreme Court to take up the issue.
“The country needs a definitive answer, and the Court has the cases before it to provide one,” Tutt said in the firm’s Aug. 25 news release.
Teacher would risk being fired over displaying Ten Commandments
A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in June 2025 that Louisiana’s law was “plainly unconstitutional,” but the decision was vacated in October as the court agreed to an en banc review, meaning with all of its judges.
The court heard arguments related to both Louisiana and Texas’ laws in January. It sided with Louisiana in a decision the following month, saying it couldn’t block the state at that stage because there wasn’t enough information about factors such as the content and prominence of the Ten Commandments displays in schools.
In light of that decision, a district court dismissed Dier’s challenge to the state law, characterizing it as a premature lawsuit based on “unresolved factual and contextual questions.” His Supreme Court petition noted that the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did allow Texas’ law to take effect in April. The court differentiated the two laws in saying Texas’ mandate “establishes a uniform display requirement we can evaluate as a matter of law without further factual development.”
Though the law has now been in effect for months, Dier told USA TODAY he hadn’t received a Ten Commandments poster to install in his classroom as of Aug. 24.
Even at the risk of being fired, Dier said he would not display it if he is given one. He expressed concern that non-Christian and Catholic students would feel alienated by the Protestant display and that it would undermine a classroom culture “built on empathy and respect and belonging” − elements that he said are key for academic success.
In response to arguments that the displays are merely a passive acknowledgment of a significant historical text, Dier told USA TODAY there is “nothing passive about the Ten Commandments being front and center in classrooms.”
His petition echoed that sentiment, saying there is “no American tradition … of state law commanding that a sacred text be posted in every schoolroom in a State.”
“What history reveals instead are the hallmarks of establishment that the founders knew and rejected: government prescription of one faith’s religious content, backed by law, in institutions the public is compelled to attend, carried out through commands public officials are bound to follow,” the petition said.
Experts have previously told USA TODAY the Supreme Court has increasingly prioritized the free exercise of religion over concerns about the separation of church and state in recent years.
President Donald Trump has expressed support for Ten Commandments laws, saying such displays “may be, in fact, the first major step in the revival of religion, which is desperately needed, in our country” in a June 2024 Truth Social post.
BrieAnna Frank is a First Amendment reporter at USA TODAY. Reach her at bjfrank@usatoday.com.
USA TODAY’s coverage of First Amendment issues is funded through a collaboration between the Freedom Forum and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.