A U.S. appeals court Friday cleared the way for Louisiana to require poster-sized displays of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms, voting 12-6 to lift a lower court’s 2024 block on the law.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it did not have enough factual information about how schools would implement the requirement to determine constitutional issues before allowing it to take effect. The court noted that details remained unclear, including how prominently schools would display the religious text, whether teachers would reference it during lessons, or whether other historical documents would accompany it.

The decision marks a sharp reversal from a three-judge panel of the same court, which ruled in June that the law violated the Establishment Clause. The case has become the focal point in a broader push by Republican-led states to expand religious content in public schools—a move supporters defend as rooted in American tradition and critics argue violates the separation of church and state.

The Decision and Its Reasoning

The court’s majority opinion emphasized that uncertainty about implementation details made an immediate constitutional judgment premature. The judges did not rule on the law’s merits but said they needed to see how schools would actually apply it before weighing First Amendment concerns.

“Without those sorts of details, the panel decided it did not have enough information to weigh any First Amendment issues,” the majority wrote, adding that there aren’t enough facts available to “permit judicial judgment rather than speculation.”

Circuit Judge James Ho, an appointee of Republican President Donald Trump, wrote separately in support. “The law is not just constitutional — it affirms our nation’s highest and most noble traditions,” Ho wrote.

The six judges who dissented offered sharply different views. Circuit Judge James L. Dennis, an appointee of Democratic President Bill Clinton, wrote that the law “is precisely the kind of establishment the Framers anticipated and sought to prevent.”

A Reversal on the Full Court

The ruling represents a dramatic reversal. In June, a three-judge panel of the same court had voted to block the law, concluding it violated the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The full court’s decision to rehear the case with all judges present shifted the outcome.

The 5th Circuit is one of the nation’s most conservative appeals courts and has been a conduit for Republican-backed policies to reach the Supreme Court.

The Louisiana law is one of several similar measures advancing through Republican-led states. Arkansas has enacted a comparable requirement that has been challenged in federal court. Texas passed a Ten Commandments display law that took effect September 1, 2025. Some Texas school districts were barred from posting the displays by federal judges in preliminary rulings, but others have already hung posters in classrooms, with some districts paying for them directly or accepting donated posters.

The Supreme Court’s past decisions on the question offer conflicting signals. In 1980, the justices ruled that a similar Kentucky law violated the Establishment Clause and served no secular purpose. In 2005, they held that Ten Commandments displays in Kentucky courthouses violated the Constitution. That same year, however, they upheld a Ten Commandments monument on the grounds of the Texas State Capitol in Austin.

Reactions and Next Steps

Republican Governor Jeff Landry celebrated the ruling Friday. “Common sense is making a comeback,” he said.

The ACLU of Louisiana, which represents plaintiffs in the case, pledged to explore all legal pathways to continue fighting the law. The Freedom From Religion Foundation, another group challenging it, called the ruling “extremely disappointing” and said families would be forced “into a game of constitutional whack-a-mole” where they would have to separately challenge displays in each school district.

Joseph Davis, the attorney representing Louisiana in the case, applauded the decision. “The court, in essence, upheld America’s time-honored tradition of recognizing faith in the public square,” Davis said.

Families from a variety of religious backgrounds—Christian, Jewish, and Hindu, as well as nonreligious families—brought the challenge. Clergy members and secular organizations also joined in opposing the law.

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said she had sent schools several correct examples of the required poster following the court’s decision.