Advertisement
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.
The Fifth Circuit — the federal appeals court in New Orleans — did not let a Supreme Court precedent stand in its way in a case involving the Ten Commandments.
The court, by a 9-to-8 vote with all six of its Trump appointees in the majority, in the spring requiring every classroom in the state’s public schools to display a Protestant version of that sacred text in dimensions no smaller than 16 inches wide and 20 inches tall.
That was a bold move, as there is a Supreme Court decision squarely on point. In 1980, the court struck down a very similar Kentucky law in .
The point of the law, the majority said back then, was “to induce the schoolchildren to read, meditate upon, perhaps to venerate and obey, the Commandments.” And that, it continued, ran afoul of the First Amendment’s prohibition of government establishment of religion.
That reasoning may or may not represent the views of the current justices. The membership of the court has of course changed significantly since then. But the Supreme Court has been adamant that only it — not a lower court — can overrule its decisions, however powerful the evidence that it may someday do so.
A Much-Reversed Appeals Court
But the Fifth Circuit is a court in a hurry. It has in recent years managed to pull off the challenging task of repeatedly outflanking to the right a court dominated by six conservative justices, and cleaning up after it has become a major part of the Supreme Court’s docket.Advertisement