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louisiana
'Strong Message to Christian Nationalists': Judge Blocks Louisiana Ten Commandments Law
"Public schools are not Sunday schools," said one advocate, "and today's decision ensures that our clients' classrooms will remain spaces where all students, regardless of their faith, feel welcomed."
Nov 12, 2024
A federal judge on Tuesday blocked a Louisiana law requiring every public school classroom in the state to display, in large font, a Protestant version of the Ten Commandments—a mandate that the new ruling characterizes as plainly unconstitutional.
The decision by U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana Judge John deGravelles, an appointee of former Democratic President Barack Obama, prohibits Louisiana's Republican-dominated government from enforcing the Ten Commandments requirement, which was set to take effect on January 1, 2025.
The judge wrote that the law—which President-elect Donald Trump endorsed earlier this year shortly before Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry signed it—is "unconstitutional on its face and in all applications."
The injunction against H.B. 71 came in response to a lawsuit brought in June by a coalition of Louisiana parents who argued the mandate "substantially interferes with and burdens the right of parents to direct their children's religious education and upbringing."
Louisiana Attorney General Elizabeth Murrill, a Republican, pledged to "immediately appeal" the decision.
Heather Weaver, senior staff attorney for the ACLU's Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief, said in a statement Tuesday that "this ruling should serve as a reality check for Louisiana lawmakers who want to use public schools to convert children to their preferred brand of Christianity."
"Public schools are not Sunday schools, and today's decision ensures that our clients' classrooms will remain spaces where all students, regardless of their faith, feel welcomed," Weaver added.
Rev. Darcy Roake, a plaintiff in the case, called H.B. 71 "a direct infringement of our religious-freedom rights, and we're pleased and relieved that the court ruled in our favor."
"As an interfaith family," Roake added, "we expect our children to receive their secular education in public school and their religious education at home and within our faith communities, not from government officials."
H.B. 71 is the first state law to require public schools to display a government-approved version of the Ten Commandments since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a similar Kentucky mandate in 1980, calling it a violation of the First Amendment's establishment clause.
Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said Tuesday that "this ruling will ensure that Louisiana families—not politicians or public school officials—get to decide if, when, and how their children engage with religion."
"It should send a strong message to Christian nationalists across the country that they cannot impose their beliefs on our nation's public school children," said Laser. "Not on our watch."
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Report Exposes 'Systemic Abuse' at For-Profit Migrant Detention Centers in Louisiana
"These individuals have fled persecution and violence only to be thrown in 'civil' detention and left to fend for themselves in an abusive, profit-driven, and manipulative system."
Aug 26, 2024
A coalition of rights groups on Monday released a report documenting "systemic human rights abuses" at migrant detention centers in Louisiana and called for an end to the use of for-profit facilities by U.S. agencies.
The 108-page report, drawn from more than 6,000 interviews at Lousiana immigrant detention centers since 2022, was produced by Robert F. Kennedy (RFK) Human Rights, the ACLU, the ACLU of Louisiana, Immigration Services and Legal Advocacy, and the National Immigration Project.
Louisiana has nine immigrant detention centers that together typically hold more than 6,000 people—second only to Texas. Eight of the nine are run by for-profit companies that have contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The report—which calls for these detention centers, which are under the remit of the New Orleans (NOLA) ICE field office, to be shut down—details a wide range of abuses including sexual assault, humiliating speech, medical neglect, and a lack of nutritious food and clean water.
"These individuals have fled persecution and violence only to be thrown in 'civil' detention and left to fend for themselves in an abusive, profit-driven, and manipulative system," Sarah Decker, a lawyer at RFK Human Rights and a lead author of the report, said in a statement.
"We've heard horrific stories over the last two years, stories that have been corroborated by extensive documentation," she added. "Our findings further support what detained people and their advocates have long demanded: the NOLA ICE jails must be shut down."
The New Orleans #Louisiana ICE Field Office (“NOLA ICE”) detains over 6,000 immigrants each day, more than any other state in the U.S. but Texas.
Our new human rights report shares first-hand accounts from detained people of abuse and degrading conditions in NOLA ICE jails,… pic.twitter.com/w63e7zCKaj
— Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights (@RFKHumanRights) August 26, 2024
Many of the interviews with the rights groups were conducted as part of initial legal screenings with detainees seeking representation. The work revealed widespread "inhumane treatment" at the nine facilities, including prolonged solitary confinement and the extended use of restrictive five-point shackles.
The report says the centers' food is insufficiently nutritious and cites instances of it being contaminated by rats or cockroaches. Authorities there often deny detainees access to menstrual products and key medicines, it says.
The report's authors argued that some of the abuses qualified as torture. "In some instances, the abuses that detained people describe firsthand in this report meet the definitions of torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment under international human rights treaties to which the United States is a party," they wrote.
The nine facilities are in rural Louisiana, far from New Orleans. One is connected to an airport—the only such ICE facility in the country, making it a key hub for the federal agency as it moves detainees around. The network of Louisiana facilities the result of what the report authors called an "explosion of immigrant incarceration" in the state that took place in the late 2010s.
Four of the nine centers are run by Geo Group, a Florida-based multinational prison firm that has long been the target of activist rage and reform efforts, which the Biden administration hasn't successfully delivered. The company reported $2.41 billion in revenues for 2023. Four other facilities are run by LaSalle Corrections, which operates facilities across the U.S. South, while one is publicly run per an ICE contract with a local sheriff's office.
The report says that the "for-profit incentive" leads to "a dangerous combination of overcrowding and understaffing" as the firms seek to pad their bottom line. A woman at one detention center said she was not fed enough so she had to buy extra items at its commissary, where a bag of Doritos cost $9. Meanwhile, detainees who took jobs at the center earned as little as $1 per day.
The rights groups' statement calls for an immediate investigation into abuses at facilities under NOLA ICE's remit. In fact, the detention centers have already been the subject of a federal oversight investigation, initiated in December 2021, but no findings have yet been released publicly, an ACLU spokesperson told Common Dreams.
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Federal Judge Gives Louisiana Polluters a 'Free Pass' to Harm Communities of Color
"Louisiana has given industrial polluters open license to poison Black and brown communities for generations," and the new ruling from a Trump-appointed judge will only magnify the problem, a campaigner said.
Aug 23, 2024
A right-wing federal judge in Louisiana on Thursday permanently blocked two federal agencies from enforcing civil rights legislation that could protect Black communities from disproportionate pollution in the state, drawing condemnation from environmental justice advocates.
The two-page ruling, issued by U.S. District Court Judge James Cain, who was appointed to the federal bench in 2019 by then-President Donald Trump, is a setback in the push for accountability for corporate polluters, most notably in "Cancer Alley," a roughly 85-mile stretch that runs along the Mississippi River from Baton Rouge to New Orleans.
Cancer Alley is home to a disproportionate number of poor and working-class Black people who have highly escalated risks of cancer thanks to the long line of petrochemical plants in the corridor. A recent study showed that the air there is far worse than previously realized.
"Louisiana has given industrial polluters open license to poison Black and brown communities for generations, only to now have one court give it a permanent free pass to abandon its responsibilities," Patrice Simms, a vice president at Earthjustice, said in a statement.
The ruling forbids the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Justice from enforcing "disparate-impact requirements" under Title VI the 1964 Civil Rights Act in the state of Louisiana. The ruling affects permitting for industrial projects and could, according to Earthjustice, even be applied to "basic services such as sewage, drinking water, and health services." Cain opted not to make the ruling effective nationwide.
The main events leading up to Thursday's decision began in January 2022, when Earthjustice filed a complaint to the EPA on behalf of St. John the Baptist Parish, a majority-Black community in the heart of Cancer Alley. The EPA then opened an investigation into whether Louisiana state agencies had failed to protect the parish from environmental health threats. The agency was preparing to negotiate reforms with the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality. This was part of a nationwide EPA effort to tackle environmental racism.
However, Louisiana, like other states, fired back. In May 2023, then-Attorney General Jeff Landry, who is now governor, filed a lawsuit—the same lawsuit Cain ultimately ruled on—against the EPA to block the investigation. The next month, the EPA dropped its investigation, disappointing parish residents and human rights groups. The Intercept later reported that the agency dropped the investigation because of fear the state's case would reach the U.S. Supreme Court.
Cain could then have dropped Louisiana's suit, but, in a move that may have been aimed at preventing future such investigations, he moved forward with it, issuing a 77-page temporary injunction in January that laid the groundwork for today's far briefer decision, which made the ruling permanent.
In the temporary injunction, Cain put forth ahistorical and power-blind arguments about race that are common in right-wing circles.
"To be sure, if a decision-maker has to consider race, to decide, it has indeed participated in racism," the judge wrote. "Pollution does not discriminate."
Earthjustice warned that though Cain's ruling applies only in Louisiana, "it may embolden other states to seek similar exceptions and create a chilling effect on civil rights enforcement by other federal agencies."
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