A Louisiana lawmaker has abandoned his bill to make the Bible the state’s official book.

State Rep. Thomas Carmody had filed HB 503 and it had even passed through a committee hearing before he took the action to pull the bill from consideration.  The bill would have made a specific Bible currently in the possession of the state the “official state book.”

Carmody pulled the bill after other lawmakers said it caused a “distraction” that took away from other issues that needed to be addressed by the state legislature.

Several Democratic opponents to the bill kept pointing out that it would likely be challenged in court, drawing away tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars on something that did not need to be spent.  However, at least one legal scholar believes the law would have been just fine.

“Judges are likely to think that this is de minimis, too minor to care about,” Professor Douglas Laycock of the Virginia School of Law told the New Orleans Times-Picayune.  “They don’t tell the President he can’t issue Thanksgiving proclamations or host a national prayer breakfast, and judges are likely to view this the same way.”