United States District Judge John W. deGravelles issued a 177-page memorandum ruling on November 12, 2026, granting a preliminary injunction that blocks enforcement of Louisiana House Bill 71. The statute required every public elementary, secondary, and post-secondary educational classroom across Louisiana to display a poster-sized copy of the Ten Commandments beginning on January 1, 2025. The federal court determined that the mandate violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The litigation—captioned Roake v. Brumley—was mounted by multi-faith and secular families represented jointly by the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Enacted in June by Republican Governor Jeff Landry, House Bill 71 required public schools and state-funded universities to display an 11-by-14-inch poster of the Protestant King James Bible translation of the Decalogue in large, legible font paired with a standardized historical context statement.
Judge deGravelles held that the law's primary objective is unabashedly religious rather than historical, declaring it impermissible under the Supreme Court's 1980 precedent Stone v. Graham, which invalidated an identical Kentucky classroom display requirement. The preliminary injunction explicitly restrains the Louisiana State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, State Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley, and five defendant local school boards from executing the statute pending final judgment. Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill released a formal public declaration pledging an expedited appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans.
State attorneys argued that the Supreme Court's 2022 decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District abandoned traditional establishment clause tests in favor of historical and contextual analyses. State litigators contended that the district court misapplied controlling legal doctrine by prioritizing Stone over contemporary religious expression jurisprudence.
