Louisiana HB 71 Signed: Ten Commandments Mandatory in Every Public School Classroom

On June 19, 2024, Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry signed House Bill 71 into law, making Louisiana the first state to mandate the permanent display of the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom, kindergarten through postsecondary. The law, Act No. 676, requires a minimum 11x14-inch display in a font large enough to be “easily readable.” It took effect immediately upon signing.

What Happened / Key Facts

HB 71 was sponsored by Rep. Dodie Horton (R-Haughton, Bossier Parish), a Southern Baptist who had previously sponsored Louisiana’s 2023 “In God We Trust” display mandate. The bill passed the House Education Committee 10-3 and moved through the Legislature with strong Republican support. WallBuilders, the Christian nationalist organization led by David Barton and his son Tim Barton, actively supported the bill; Tim Barton testified in its favor. Governor Landry, who had positioned himself as a culture-war standard-bearer since winning the governorship in late 2023, signed it without hesitation.

The statute specifies that the display must reproduce “the Ten Commandments” in a form consistent with the Protestant King James Version rendering — the specific version embedded in the law. The mandate applies not only to K-12 public schools but also to public colleges and universities, a scope broader than any prior analogous state statute.

The law is an exact instance of the Project Blitz Tier-1 playbook (2017-06-01–project-blitz-legislative-playbook-christian-nationalist-state-laws): the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation’s model-bill taxonomy classifies Ten Commandments display mandates as Tier-1 legislation — low-exposure “value normalization” statutes designed to establish the religious premise before Tier-2 and Tier-3 bills escalate the legal stakes. The Louisiana law operationalizes the Tier-1 category in the post-Kennedy v. Bremerton environment: after the Supreme Court replaced the Lemon test with a “historical practices and understandings” standard in June 2022 (2022-06-27–kennedy-v-bremerton-supreme-court-approves-school-prayer), display mandates that would have been struck under Lemon moved into a legally contested zone, making Louisiana’s statute not a symbolic gesture but a designed test case.

Mike Johnson, the Louisiana-bred Republican Speaker of the House, publicly endorsed the law: “I’m supportive of it… I don’t think it’s offensive in any way” (per his actor profile in this KB).

Why This Event Matters

HB 71 is the most legally significant live instance of the litigate-upward feedback loop documented in litigate-upward-loop-project-blitz-model-bills-captured-court-ratification-feedback-loop. The statute’s structural purpose is not to govern classroom aesthetics; it is to manufacture a controlled-fact Establishment Clause case calibrated for the post-Lemon, post-Kennedy Supreme Court. The litigation that followed (Roake v. Brumley — see 2024-06-24–roake-v-brumley-louisiana-ten-commandments-lawsuit-filed) confirms this: five of the largest national religious-liberty and church-state organizations mounted the plaintiff side within five days of signing, indicating the litigation vehicle was anticipated.

Louisiana is the loop’s cleanest current example because the statute was enacted after the doctrine-stripping in Legs 2 of the loop had occurred, making it the first generation of Tier-1 legislation written for the post-Lemon legal landscape.

Broader Context

Louisiana joins Texas (Ten Commandments classroom mandate paired with SB 11 daily-prayer requirement, 2025) in deploying the full Project Blitz Tier-1 template in the post-Bremerton window. The Louisiana law predates Texas’s by roughly a year and is the more legally advanced test case because Roake v. Brumley has already generated a Fifth Circuit en banc ruling (February 2026 — see 2024-06-24–roake-v-brumley-louisiana-ten-commandments-lawsuit-filed).

Rep. Horton announced after the signing that additional legislation was planned, signaling that Louisiana’s use of HB 71 as a beachhead for escalating religious-right education policy was explicit rather than accidental.

Research Gaps

• Full legislative vote count in both chambers (committee vote was 10-3; floor votes not confirmed from primary source in this pass)
• Text of Gov. Landry’s signing statement, if any
• Whether WallBuilders/CPCF drafted the bill text directly or adapted it from a model template (secondary sources attribute Project Blitz connection; primary-source documentation not in this pass)

Related Entries

• 2017-06-01–project-blitz-legislative-playbook-christian-nationalist-state-laws
• 2022-06-27–kennedy-v-bremerton-supreme-court-approves-school-prayer
• 2024-06-24–roake-v-brumley-louisiana-ten-commandments-lawsuit-filed
• 2026-03-02–texas-school-prayer-sb11-most-districts-decline
• litigate-upward-loop-project-blitz-model-bills-captured-court-ratification-feedback-loop
• johnson-mike