Roake v. Brumley Filed — Multi-Faith Coalition Challenges Louisiana Ten Commandments Mandate; 5th Circuit En Banc Reinstates Law (Feb. 2026)

On June 24, 2024, five days after Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry signed HB 71 into law (2024-06-19–louisiana-hb71-ten-commandments-classroom-mandate), a multi-faith coalition of nine Louisiana families filed a federal lawsuit challenging the statute. The case, Rev. Roake v. Brumley, No. 24-30706 (5th Cir.), became the primary active litigation of the litigate-upward feedback loop’s Tier-1 category, generating a district-court injunction, a unanimous three-judge panel ruling against the law, and then a 12-6 en banc Fifth Circuit reversal reinstating the statute — completing one full loop cycle in under two years.

What Happened / Key Facts

Plaintiffs and counsel. The plaintiff coalition included nine Louisiana families with children in public schools, representing a range of religious traditions. Lead plaintiff Rev. Darcy Roake is a minister. Plaintiffs were represented by the ACLU of Louisiana, the national ACLU, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP (pro bono). Amicus support came from the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the General Synod of the United Church of Christ, multiple Jewish organizations (Union for Reform Judaism, Central Conference of American Rabbis, National Council of Jewish Women, Hadassah), the Sikh Coalition, Muslim for Progressive Values, and Hindus for Human Rights. The breadth of the interfaith plaintiff network signals this was a coordinated response to a known litigation vehicle.

Defendant. Cade Brumley, Louisiana State Superintendent of Education, served as the primary defendant, along with members of the Louisiana State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and three parish school boards (East Baton Rouge, Livingston, St. Tammany).

Procedural timeline:

En banc outcome. The February 2026 en banc ruling did not rule HB 71 constitutional on the merits; it held the plaintiffs’ claims were not justiciable at the preliminary-injunction stage, vacated the injunction, and remanded. The practical effect — the law goes into effect — is identical to a constitutional holding for the state’s purposes, placing Louisiana Ten Commandments displays in classrooms while the case continues in district court.

Intervening amici on the state’s side. Amicus briefs defending HB 71 were filed by: America’s Future, Restoring Liberty Action Committee, LONANG Institute, Conservative Legal Defense and Education Fund, and a coalition of 20 states (Ohio, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Texas, Montana, Florida, Kentucky, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Indiana, Missouri, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, West Virginia, and others).

Why This Event Matters

Roake v. Brumley is the most-litigated current instance of the litigate-upward loop described in litigate-upward-loop-project-blitz-model-bills-captured-court-ratification-feedback-loop. The case illustrates the loop’s design in two ways:

1. The statute was written for the post-Lemon landscape. HB 71 was enacted after Kennedy v. Bremerton (2022) stripped the Lemon test from Establishment Clause jurisprudence. The state’s appellate strategy — ultimately successful at the en banc level — relied precisely on the post-Lemon “historical practices” standard that the captured court installed in Leg 2 of the loop. The legislation was calibrated to the doctrine removal that preceded it.

2. The en banc outcome is the loop mechanism visible in real time. A majority of the full Fifth Circuit — a court whose composition reflects the Federalist Society judicial pipeline documented in federalist-society-as-cross-vector-coordinator-negative-coalition — reversed a unanimous panel ruling holding the law unconstitutional. The reversal did not vindicate the law on the merits but deployed a procedural vehicle (justiciability) that achieved the same operational result: the law is in force, the constitutional question is preserved for Supreme Court review, and the case is now positioned as the next vehicle for the Court to address Ten Commandments displays post-Bremerton.

The 12-6 split (with 6 dissenters, approximately the ideological minority of the en banc court) mirrors the 6-3 structure of the Supreme Court decisions that prepared the legal environment for HB 71’s passage.

Broader Context

The Texas Ten Commandments classroom-display mandate (passed 2025, referenced in 2026-03-02–texas-school-prayer-sb11-most-districts-decline) followed Louisiana’s HB 71 by a year and operates in the same post-Bremerton window. Louisiana’s case is more procedurally advanced and is the more likely Supreme Court vehicle because it has completed an en banc circuit cycle.

The 20-state amicus coalition on the defendant’s side indicates coordinated anticipation of a Supreme Court petition: the brief-writing network assembled in Roake v. Brumley is the same infrastructure that has supported analogous Establishment Clause vehicle cases at the Supreme Court level.

If the Supreme Court grants certiorari in Roake v. Brumley or its successor posture, it would be the first direct SCOTUS ruling on mandatory Ten Commandments displays since Stone v. Graham (1980), which struck a similar Kentucky law under Lemon — the same doctrine the Court abandoned in 2022.

Research Gaps

• Whether a petition for certiorari has been filed or is anticipated following the en banc ruling (status as of June 2026 not confirmed in this pass)
• Specific author of the en banc majority opinion and whether it directly addressed the Lemon vs. historical-practices question on the merits
• Whether the district court on remand has issued any subsequent orders (case remains live as of the research date)
• Whether HB 71 displays have actually been installed in Louisiana classrooms following the en banc reinstatement, and any documented compliance or non-compliance

Related Entries

• 2024-06-19–louisiana-hb71-ten-commandments-classroom-mandate
• 2017-06-01–project-blitz-legislative-playbook-christian-nationalist-state-laws
• 2022-06-27–kennedy-v-bremerton-supreme-court-approves-school-prayer
• 2026-03-02–texas-school-prayer-sb11-most-districts-decline
• litigate-upward-loop-project-blitz-model-bills-captured-court-ratification-feedback-loop
• federalist-society-as-cross-vector-coordinator-negative-coalition
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