The suit was filed in June by parents of Louisiana public school children with various religious backgrounds, who said the law violates First Amendment language forbidding government establishment of religion and guaranteeing religious liberty. Backers of the law argue that the Ten Commandments belong in classrooms because the commandments are historical and are part of the foundation of U.S. law.

The Louisiana law requires the commandments be posted no later than Jan. 1, a deadline unaffected by Friday’s agreement. The deal assures that the defendants in the lawsuit — state education officials and several local school boards — will not post the commandments in classrooms before Nov. 15, and won’t make rules governing the law’s implementation before then.

Lester Duhe, a spokesman for Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, said the defendants “agreed to not take public-facing compliance measures until November 15” to provide time for briefs, arguments and a ruling.

In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a similar Kentucky law violated the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution, which says Congress can “make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The high court found that the law had no secular purpose but rather served a plainly religious purpose.

In 2005, the Supreme Court held that such displays in a pair of Kentucky courthouses violated the Constitution. At the same time, the court upheld a Ten Commandments marker on the grounds of the Texas state Capitol in Austin.

Louisiana’s new law does not require school systems to spend public money on Ten Commandments posters. It allows the systems to accept donated posters or money to pay for the displays.

The law also specifically authorizes but does not require other postings in public schools, including: The Mayflower Compact, which was signed by religious pilgrims aboard the Mayflower in 1620 and is often referred to as America’s “First Constitution”; the Declaration of Independence; and the Northwest Ordinance, which established a government in the Northwest Territory — in the present day Midwest — and created a pathway for admitting new states to the Union.

The legal challenge to the law came soon after it was signed by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican who succeeded two-term Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards in January. Landry’s inauguration marked a full takeover of state government by the GOP in a Bible Belt state where the party already held other every statewide elected position and a supermajority in the Legislature.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — It’s a beloved century-old Carnival season tradition in New Orleans — masked riders on lavish floats fling strings of colorful beads or other trinkets to parade watchers clamoring with outstretched arms.

It’s all in good fun but it’s also a bit of a “plastics disaster,” says Judith Enck, a former Environmental Protection Agency regional administrator and president of the advocacy group Beyond Plastics.

Carnival season is at its height this weekend. The city’s annual series of parades began more than a week ago and will close out on Tuesday — Mardi Gras — a final day of revelry before Lent. Thousands attend the parades and they leave a mess of trash behind.

Despite a massive daily cleanup operation that leaves the post-parade landscape remarkably clean, uncaught beads dangle from tree limbs like Spanish moss and get ground into the mud under the feet of passers-by. They also wash into storm strains, where they only complicate efforts to keep the flood-prone city’s streets dry. Tons have been pulled from the aging drainage system in recent years.

And those that aren’t removed from the storm drains eventually get washed through the system and into Lake Pontchartrain — the large Gulf of Mexico inlet north of the city. The nonbiodegradable plastics are a threat to fish and wildlife, Enck said.

“The waste is becoming a defining characteristic of this event,” said Brett Davis, a New Orleans native who grew up catching beads at Mardi Gras parades. He now heads a nonprofit that works to reduce the waste.

One way of making a dent in the demand for new plastic beads is to reuse old ones. Parade-goers who carry home shopping bags of freshly caught beads, foam footballs, rubber balls and a host of other freshly flung goodies can donate the haul to the Arc of New Orleans. The organization repackages and resells the products to raise money for the services it provides to adults and children with disabilities.

The city of New Orleans and the tourism promotion organization New Orleans & Co. also have collection points along parade routes for cans, glass and, yes, beads.

Aside from recycling, there’s a small but growing movement to find something else for parade riders to lob.

Grounds Krewe, Davis’s nonprofit, is now marketing more than two dozen types of nonplastic, sustainable items for parade riders to pitch. Among them: headbands made of recycled T-shirts; beads made out of paper, acai seeds or recycled glass; wooden yo-yos; and packets of locally-made coffee, jambalaya mix or other food items — useful, consumable items that won’t just take up space in someone’s attic or, worse, wind up in the lake.

“I just caught 15 foam footballs at a parade,” Davis joked. “What am I going to do with another one?”

Plastic imports remain ubiquitous but efforts to mitigate their damage may be catching on.

“These efforts will help green Mardi Gras,” said Christy Leavitt, of the group Oceana, in an email.

Enck, who visited New Orleans last year and attended Mardi Gras celebrations, hopes parade organizers will adopt the biodegradable alternatives.

“There are great ways to have fun around this wonderful festival,” she said. ”But you can have fun without damaging the environment.”

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Associated Press reporter Jennifer McDermott in Providence, Rhode Island, contributed to this report.

The National Weather Service called it “super fog” — a combination of thick smoke from fires in marshy wetlands of south Louisiana and the fog that often hangs thick in the air on cool, windless mornings.

It was a deadly combination this week. Smoke spreading through the region from a marsh fire east of New Orleans combined with thick fog and reduced visibility on highways to near nothing. It caused a series of horrific crashes that turned a section of Interstate 55 near New Orleans into a virtual junkyard of mangled and charred vehicles.

Officials said 158 vehicles were involved. There were 25 reported injuries, and the death toll from Monday’s accident stood at seven as of Tuesday afternoon.

SUPER FOG OR SMOG?

Super fog and smog are both types of fog, according to the National Weather Service. But smog — often a problem in cities with heavy car traffic or industry — is formed when fog combines with smoke from pollutants. It can reduce visibility and pose a health hazard.

The term super fog describes fog enhanced by smoke from damp, smoldering organic material, according to the weather service. It can lower visibility to less than 10 feet (3 meters).

HOW OFTEN DOES SUPER FOG OCCUR?

Meteorologist Tyler Stanfield with the weather service’s New Orleans office said super fog events “are not overly rare, but they do take a perfect storm of conditions to materialize” and can happen a few times per year. Fireworks can contribute to super fog conditions, and Stanfield said super fog has occurred during Fourth of July and New Year’s celebrations.

Stanfield said very light winds and high pressure over the region Monday trapped moisture near the ground, which he described as “a pretty typical fog setup.” The moist leaves and brush that were burning resulted in very low visibility.

ARE FIRES COMMON IN LOUISIANA MARSHES?

They may be considered wetlands, but marshes can dry out, said Louisiana Agriculture Commissioner Mike Strain, particularly when the state is suffering through a drought that has contributed to wildfiresin marshes and timberland. When the dry grass ignites, “it burns not only the grass on top, it burns through the crust and the peat layer underneath,” Strain said.

Such fires occur every year in south Louisiana. They can be caused by lightning strikes or people — hunters seeking to flush game, wildlife officials doing controlled burns to promote new growth, or sometimes arsonists. The fires are usually in remote, hard-to-access areas, making it difficult to fight them when they get out of control.

“They’re not necessarily like big out-of-control wildfires, but they kind of smolder and produce smoke,” Stanfield said, adding that they can last for weeks or months at a time.

“It’s one of those phenomena that, with climate change, we might see it more often,” said Stephen Murphy, director of the disaster management program at Tulane’s School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. “The drought conditions down here certainly fueled, no pun intended, all that marsh fire.”

HAVE CONDITIONS IMPROVED?

The super fog cleared by Monday evening. Increasing wind and high pressure were moving towards Georgia, eliminating any imminent threat of a repeat super fog event. Meanwhile, Strain said, efforts continue to extinguish the marsh fire near New Orleans that has pumped out much of the smoke that contributed to Monday’s accidents.

“We have two high-volume pumps that are flooding the whole area with water,” Strain said. “It can still smolder, even as it vents up. We hope to markedly reduce the amount of smoke.”

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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Increases in federal flood insurance premiums that are projected to surpass 700% over the coming years are already leading people to back out of home purchases and will likely lead to an exodus of residents and businesses from southern Louisiana, officials told a federal judge Thursday in New Orleans.

The testimony came in a hearing in a lawsuit Louisiana and nine other states filed against the federal government to block sharp increases in national flood insurance rates. A phase-in of the new rates began in 2021. Annual increases are limited to 18%. The Federal Emergency Management Agency said the new method of computing rates has resulted in reductions or little or no increase for most policy holders.

But FEMA figures also show huge impending increases in some Louisiana ZIP codes. State and local officials who testified Thursday said the increases are expected to result in some people in working-class southern Louisiana to abandon their mortgages, try to sell homes that have been in families for generations, or drop their insurance.

“We’ve already seen a slowdown in new building,” said Matt Jewell, president of St. Charles Parish, west of New Orleans.

The implications go beyond blows to the real estate market and tax revenue. Officials said lower revenue could also hamper flood prevention and mitigation efforts. And some federal disaster programs require people in certain areas to have flood insurance — which the officials argued is becoming unaffordable.

State attorneys said during arguments before U.S. District Judge Darrel Papillion that participation in the National Flood Insurance Program requires that local governments adopt building-elevation policies and flood-control efforts that often require taxes — approved by voters believing the mitigation efforts will hold rates down.

“They turned us into liars,” state Solicitor General Liz Murrill told Papillion.

Papillion was hearing arguments on the federal government’s motion to dismiss the suit and on the states’ motion for an injunction blocking the rate increases pending further court proceedings. It was unclear if he would rule Thursday.

Florida, Idaho, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia are the other states listed as plaintiffs, along with some local governments and flood control bodies in Louisiana.

FEMA has said its new premium system is an improvement over past methods, incorporating data that wasn’t used in the past, including scientific models and costs involved in rebuilding a home. The agency has said the old method could result in people with lower-valued homes paying more than a fair share, while those with higher-value homes pay relatively less.

A return to the old system of calculating premiums would not guarantee a reduction of rates, Justice Department attorney Yoseph Desta argued.

He and other government attorneys argued Thursday that the new rate plan had been in the works for years, that the states had plenty of opportunity for input, and that the lawsuit, filed months after the phase-in began, was filed too late. They also argued the states have no standing to sue over the rates set by the National Flood Insurance Program.

The ruling by three judges on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans overturned part of a lower court ruling that would have revoked the Food and Drug Administration’s decades-old approval of mifepristone. But it left intact part of the ruling that would end the availability of the drug by mail, allow it to be used through only the seventh week of pregnancy rather than the 10th, and require that it be administered in the presence of a physician.

Even those restrictions won’t take effect right away, because the Supreme Court previously intervened to keep the drug available during the legal fight.

“In loosening mifepristone’s safety restrictions, FDA failed to address several important concerns about whether the drug would be safe for the women who use it,” Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod wrote for a panel of three 5th Circuit judges.

She was joined by Judge Cory Wilson. Judge James Ho dissented, arguing to fully uphold a Texas-based federal judge’s April ruling that would revoke the drug’s approval, which the FDA granted in that approval in 2000.

There is no precedent for a U.S. court overturning the approval of a drug that the FDA has deemed safe and effective. While new drug safety issues often emerge after FDA approval, the agency is required to monitor medicines on the market, evaluate emerging issues and take action to protect U.S. patients. Congress delegated that responsibility to the FDA — not the courts— more than a century ago.

But during a May 17 hearing, the 5th Circuit panel pushed back frequently against assertions that U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s April 7 ruling was unprecedented and unwarranted.

Kacsmaryk, Ho and Wilson are all appointees of former President Donald Trump. Elrod was appointed to the 5th Circuit by former President George W. Bush. All of the judges have a history of supporting abortion restrictions.

Elrod’s opinion Wednesday said the full revocation of FDA’s approval of the drug was likely barred by legal time limits. Ho argued that the approval violated the 19th century Comstock Act.

The Texas lawsuit was filed by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal group that was also involved in the Mississippi case that led to the June 2022 Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade and the nationwide right to abortion.

Mifepristone is one of two pills used in medication abortions. The other drug, misoprostol, is also used to treat other medical conditions. Health care providers have said they could switch to misoprostol if mifepristone is no longer available or is too hard to obtain. Misoprostol is somewhat less effective in ending pregnancies.

A federal judge has rejected a plea deal in the drug and rape case against former NFL star Darren Sharper, saying the possible nine-year sentence doesn’t reflect the seriousness of his alleged crimes.

U.S. District Judge Jane Triche Milazzo said Thursday that Sharper must decide before a sentencing hearing next month whether he wants to withdraw his guilty plea.

Sharper had pleaded guilty as part of a deal involving charges in four states. He also has pleaded guilty or no contest to similar charges in state courts in California, Arizona, Nevada and Louisiana.

His attorneys declined comment as they left the courtroom.