Christopher Dier, a history teacher at Benjamin Franklin High School in New Orleans, sued Louisiana Governor Jeffery Landry, Attorney General Liz Murrill, State Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley, and eleven members of the Louisiana State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, arguing that La. R.S. § 17:2124 — known as H.B. 71 — violates the Establishment Clause, the Free Exercise Clause, and the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. The law requires each public school governing authority to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom, on a poster or framed document at least eleven inches by fourteen inches, with the text as the central focus in a large, easily readable font, accompanied by a prewritten context statement detailing the history of the Ten Commandments' use in public education.
Judge Greg Gerard Guidry of the Eastern District of Louisiana granted the defendants' motion to dismiss without prejudice, relying heavily on the Fifth Circuit's February 2026 en banc decision in Roake v. Brumley, 170 F.4th 292 (5th Cir. 2026). In Roake, the en banc court vacated a preliminary injunction against H.B. 71 that the Middle District of Louisiana had entered, holding that the parents' challenge turned on unresolved factual and contextual questions and that equitable relief was premature. The en banc court reasoned that because H.B. 71 leaves the nature of each display to the discretion of local school boards, critical questions — including how prominently the displays will appear, what other materials might accompany them, and how — if at all — teachers will reference them during instruction — remain unanswered, foreclosing the fact-intensive constitutional analysis required by the Supreme Court's Ten Commandments precedents.
Dier argued that Roake did not control his case for two reasons: first, that as a teacher personally subject to H.B. 71's mandate, his position differs from the parent and student plaintiffs in Roake who were not required to do anything; and second, that he raised a compelled-speech claim that the Roake plaintiffs had not asserted. Judge Guidry rejected both arguments. On the teacher-versus-bystander distinction, the court held that Roake's ripeness reasoning rests on the nature of the constitutional inquiry required by pre-enforcement challenges to H.B. 71, not on the identity of the plaintiff. On the statutory-mandate argument, the court held that Dier misread the Act: H.B. 71 requires each public school governing authority to display the Ten Commandments, not teachers themselves, leaving to each governing authority's discretion whether a particular teacher will be required to physically post or interact with any display. The court concluded that Dier's alleged injury from being personally required to display the Commandments rests on a chain of assumptions about how Benjamin Franklin High School's governing authority will implement the Act, making his claims even weaker on ripeness grounds than those in Roake.
The court also noted that the Fifth Circuit's April 21, 2026 en banc decision in Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District reinforced its conclusion. In Nathan, the Fifth Circuit held that a similar Texas law, S.B. 10, was ripe for pre-enforcement challenge because everything needed to resolve the claims was in the statutory text — in contrast to H.B. 71, which delegates display details to local governing authorities, permits (but does not require) inclusion of other historical documents, and does not specify where displays must appear.
Because all three of Dier's claims turn on unresolved factual and contextual questions about how H.B. 71 displays will actually be implemented, the court dismissed the complaint without prejudice and denied as moot Dier's motion for a preliminary injunction or, in the alternative, summary judgment, as well as his motion to expedite consideration.