Controversial Ten Commandments law for schools struck down in court

A federal appeals court on Friday struck down Louisiana's law requiring schools to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms, calling the law "facially unconstitutional."

The state law required state-funded K-12 and public universities to hang posters of the Ten Commandments. It is unclear how many school districts had begun to comply while the law was being challenged in the courts. The five school districts that sued to overturn the law were granted a temporary exemption during the litigation.

“Parents and students challenge a statute requiring public schools to permanently display the Ten Commandments in every classroom in Louisiana," the court's ruling reads in part. "The district court found the statute facially unconstitutional and preliminarily enjoined its enforcement. We affirm."

Plaintiffs like Rev. Darcy Roake, a Unitarian Universalist minister and PhD candidate at Tulane University in New Orleans, celebrated the ruling.

"We are grateful for this decision, which honors the religious diversity and religious-freedom rights of public school families across Louisiana,” Roake told NBC News.

The lawsuit's next stop could be the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority. Earlier this year, the court deadlocked in a case that could have created the U.S.'s first religious charter school in Oklahoma. Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself from the case.

Oklahoma's Supreme Court initially ruled that the charter school violated the constitutional separation of church and state because it would receive state tax dollars.