Texas school districts must decide whether to display Ten Commandments posters in every classroom before a new law requiring them to goes into effect Monday, even as its fate remains tied up in court.
A federal judge enjoined 11 school districts from displaying the posters last week, in the wake of a community-led lawsuit, but Attorney General Ken Paxton appealed that ruling and said in a statement earlier last week that districts not enjoined by the court ruling must comply with the law, Senate Bill 10.
“It’s a no-win situation,” said Mark Chancey, Bible Studies professor at Southern Methodist University. “Districts that post the commandments will be faulted for disregarding the courts and the Constitution. Districts that do not post them will be faulted for not following the state law.”
[…]
How to comply with the law, however, is still up for debate.
The law says the Ten Commandments must be displayed in every classroom if they are donated, but it also states that districts don’t have to purchase them if they aren’t donated, leaving schools in legal mire. Leaders must decide whether to purchase extra posters so that every classroom has one, leave classrooms without posters if not enough are donated, or wait until the legality is cleared up in the courts to post them at all.
Biery’s decision temporarily blocked the law in several Austin- and San Antonio-area districts, including Alamo Heights, North East, Lackland, Northside, Austin, Lake Travis and Dripping Springs ISDs. Houston-area districts involved in the injunction include Houston ISD, Fort Bend ISD and Cypress-Fairbanks ISD, while Plano ISD was the only Dallas-area district involved.
The attorney general’s office represented nine of those districts, with the exception of Houston ISD and Austin ISD. In a statement posted on his X account Monday morning, Paxton said Biery’s ruling only affected those nine districts, while the main statement on his website includes Houston ISD and Austin ISD.
Those instructions from Paxton leave school districts in limbo, said law professor at the University of Miami Law School Charlton Copeland.
“According to the attorney general, it seems ‘wait until you’re sued’ is the order of the day,” Copeland said. “Don’t comply before you are sued and before there is a judgment issued against you.”
In his decision, Biery explicitly said the law “is not neutral with respect to religion” and cited a First Amendment clause that bars the government from prohibiting religious beliefs.
“By design, and on its face, the statute mandates the display of expressly religious scripture in every public school classroom,” Biery wrote. “The Act also requires that a Judeo-Christian version of that scripture be used, that is exclusionary of other faiths.”
That ruling sets a precedent for other school districts to follow, said Heather Weaver, senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief.
“Ken Paxton’s demand that school districts implement SB 10 is unwise and unlawful,” Weaver said in a statement. “A federal court has ruled that SB 10 is plainly unconstitutional, and school districts have an independent legal obligation to respect the constitutional rights of children and families.”
At a Conroe ISD school board meeting before Biery’s ruling, district counsel Kara Belew advised the district against placing the posters up while awaiting a ruling. That guidance came moments after Conroe received 330 Ten Commandments posters from volunteers.
“The district has begun delivering the required Senate Bill 10 posters to campuses and they will be displayed in classrooms by the first class on Sept. 2, since Sept.1 is a holiday,” Andrew Stewart, executive director of communications for Conroe ISD, said Thursday. “While we anticipate that further court action may result in an injunction requiring their removal, Conroe ISD will continue to comply with the law as it stands.”
See here and here for the background. Unfortunately, we still have no idea what’s going on with that other lawsuit, as that might have provided some more clarity – or possibly more confusion – if there had been a ruling. I’m not sure that case has even been heard yet. Be that as it may, the clear message I got from this story is that parents or other interested parties in districts other than the eleven currently under injunction could file their own lawsuits now and cite this one as a guiding principle. I don’t know how practical that is, and I don’t know how long it might take to get before a judge to argue the case, but one might at least get a quick restraining order until the matter can be heard. Got to be better than waiting and doing nothing. Good luck, y’all.
It’s not even a “Judeo-Christian version of that scripture.” It’s specifically the version used by certain Protestant sects. For example, Jewish, Catholic, and Lutheran versions of the Ten Commandments are organized differently. And even this doesn’t take into account the use of different translations of Exodus and Deuteronomy.
So this law doesn’t just promote “Judeo-Christianity” over other religious beliefs—it promotes the beliefs of particular Christian sects over every other religious belief.
As I ‘be said before, I’d compromise on an annotated version, with the annotations being examples of Trump violating a Commandment. By my count, that’s 9/10.
Maximum confusion about just how authoritarian some new rules are – much less whether they’re even Constitutional. Sounds right on brand to me.