The Louisiana governor who made national headlines this week when he signed legislation requiring public schools to display the Ten Commandments is now responding to questions about its dubious constitutionality by questioning whether separation of church and state even exists.
Republican Gov. Jeff Landy signed the bill into law Thursday and even bragged that he welcomed civil rights groups who threatened to sue based on First Amendment violations.
“The First Amendment promises that we all get to decide for ourselves what religious beliefs, if any, to hold and practice, without pressure from the government. Politicians have no business imposing their preferred religious doctrine on students and families in public schools,” the group of civil rights organizations said in a statement.
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Appearing Friday on Fox News, Landry faced a similar question from the host, who asked if someone in those schools practices a different religion or background, and they want their rules or covenant on a wall, can they make a valid claim for that.
Landry said they'd have to make that case to the legislature and meet the criteria of the statute. Then he launched into a dubious Constitutional law argument.
"You know, the interesting thing about the First Amendment — I heard it in one of the comments that you played — is this separation of church and state. I challenge anyone who says that to go find me those words in the First Amendment. They don't exist."
Landry then referred to the section — known as the Establishment Clause — as a "metaphor breathed into the First Amendment by a liberal Supreme Court in the 1930s."
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The hardline conservative governor then continued to lay out his argument, saying the founding documents were based on "Judeo-Christian" principles.
"We've got it on our money, we've got it all over our Capitol. We've got it in the Supreme Court. It is those that want to extract that out of the foundation of this country that really and truly want to create the chaos that ultimately is the demise of this nation," he said.
Though not explicitly stated in the First Amendment, the clause is "often interpreted to mean that the Constitution requires the separation of church and state," wrote Hana M. Ryman and J. Mark Alcorn in an article for the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University.
The phrase dates to the early days of United States history, and Thomas Jefferson "referred to the First Amendment as creating a 'wall of separation' between church and state as the third president," according to Cornell University's Legal Information Institute.
"The term is also often employed in court cases. For example, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black famously stated in Everson v. Board of Education that “[t]he First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state,” and “[t]hat wall must be kept high and impregnable.”