For Republican officials eager to impose the Ten Commandments on public school students, it’s been a difficult year. In June, for example, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked a Louisiana law from taking effect, unanimously ruling that the state-sponsored religion law was “facially unconstitutional.”
In early August, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction against a similar Arkansas law on Ten Commandments displays in schools.
Now Texas has joined the club. The New York Times reported:
A federal judge ordered some public school districts in Texas on Tuesday to remove Ten Commandment displays from their classroom walls by next month, a victory for families who had argued that the posters infringed on their religious freedom. The ruling from Judge Orlando L. Garcia … applies to 14 public school districts, including ones in Fort Worth, Arlington and Conroe.
In his ruling, Garcia wrote that “it is impracticable, if not impossible, to prevent plaintiffs from being subjected to unwelcome religious displays” without stopping school districts from enforcing that law.
The ruling comes roughly three months after a different federal court reached the same conclusion in a related case filed by several Dallas-area families and faith leaders.
Rachel Laser, president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which helped bring the case, said in a statement, “All Texas public school districts should heed the court’s clear warning: It’s plainly unconstitutional to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms. Families throughout Texas and across the country get to decide how and when their children engage with religion — not politicians or public-school officials.”
For those who might benefit from a refresher, it’s worth appreciating why policies like these are legal, political and theological messes.
For example, Protestants, Jews and Catholics each honor the Commandments, but the different faith traditions number and word the Decalogue in different ways. It’s not the job of politicians in state government to choose which version, if any, deserves an official endorsement to be imposed on public school children.
The legal dimension to this is every bit as jarring. Indeed, as we’ve discussed, when officials in Kentucky approved a very similar law nearly a half-century ago, the Supreme Court ruled in 1980 that displays of the Ten Commandments in public schools are unconstitutional.
The Decalogue, the justices ruled in Stone v. Graham, is “undeniably a sacred text in the Jewish and Christian faiths” but that displaying it “serves no … educational function.” So why would Republicans in several states take a step that the Supreme Court has already rejected? It’s likely because they’re confident that the newly politicized high court and its dominant far-right majority will simply overturn the Stone precedent, doing fresh harm to the wall that’s supposed to separate church and state in this country. These GOP officials are almost certainly aware of the First Amendment, just as they’re almost certainly aware of the Supreme Court precedent that says they cannot legally do what they’re trying to do. But since the court has moved sharply to the right in the course of the last 45 years, GOP officials in Texas and others are counting on Republican-appointed justices to clear the way for more government-imposed religion in public schools. That hasn’t happened — at least not yet — which is why these state measures keep losing in court in the meantime. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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