A federal judge sided with 15 Texas families suing public school districts — including Conroe ISD — to stop the Ten Commandments from being displayed in classrooms, saying the requirement interferes with their religious freedoms.
U.S. District Judge Orlando L. Garcia issued the ruling in San Antonio on Tuesday as he also denied a motion from the defendants to dismiss the case.
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“It is impracticable, if not impossible, to prevent plaintiffs from being subjected to unwelcome religious displays without enjoining defendants from enforcing SB 10 across their districts,” Garcia wrote in the ruling.
The court gave the school districts until Dec. 1 to remove any Ten Commandments displays that are currently up; an additional notice of compliance is due on Dec. 9.
Alongside Conroe ISD, the lawsuit was initially filed against Comal ISD, Georgetown ISD, Flour Bluff ISD, Fort Worth ISD, Arlington ISD, McKinney ISD, Frisco ISD, Northwest ISD, Azle ISD, Rockwall ISD, Lovejoy ISD, Mansfield ISD, and McAllen ISD. McAllen ISD and Arlington ISD were later dismissed from the case on the condition that they follow orders issued by the court.
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The Ten Commandments display law has sparked debate about the role the text played in shaping the American legal system, and several legal experts have disagreed with Paxton’s claims that the commandments played an integral role in U.S. history.
In the case Garcia is presiding over, Lenee Bien-Willner is a Jewish plaintiff with three children enrolled in Conroe ISD. Her family regularly attends synagogue, her children attend Hebrew school and Sunday school, which the lawsuit says she taught for many years.
“Ms. Bien-Willner objects to the school displays mandated by S.B. 10 because the displays promote and forcibly impose on (her minor children) a specific version of the Ten Commandments to which her family does not subscribe, in a manner that is contrary to Jewish teachings and her family’s Jewish faith,” the initial complaint said.
See here for the background on this lawsuit, and here for the ruling on the first case. I thought this one had been filed in the same court as the first one, but apparently not (or it was moved). Be that as it may, here we are with basically the same result.
The Trib offers an update on the bigger picture.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on Jan. 20 will hear both the Texas case and a similar case happening in Louisiana, which was the first state to pass a requirement to post the Ten Commandments in classrooms.
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In August, U.S. District Judge Fred Biery blocked 11 other school districts from posting the Ten Commandments. Texas appealed Biery’s ruling, sending the case to the same court where a three-judge panel recently blocked Louisiana’s Ten Commandments law from taking effect. Texas requested that all 17 active judges on the court hear the case, as opposed to a three-judge panel.
The rulings in both cases only apply to the 25 school districts named in the lawsuits. Attorneys expressed hope that other districts would not implement the law, but they later told the court in a legal filing that many districts are implementing it or have signaled an intent to do so.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas and a coalition of religious freedom organizations are representing the families in both cases.
Another group of parents filed a similar lawsuit in Dallas during the summer. That lawsuit does not appear to have made any meaningful progress since it was filed in June. A judge has threatened to dismiss the case if the plaintiffs do not provide required legal documents to the defendants by Dec. 1.
In the Nov. 18 ruling, Garcia concluded that the law “makes it impossible” for children to avoid the Ten Commandment displays. He noted that districts have a “strong incentive” to comply with the law, citing the state’s recent lawsuit against the Galveston school district for its alleged noncompliance.
In his August decision, Biery concluded that the law favors Christianity over other faiths, is not neutral with respect to religion and is likely to interfere with families’ “exercise of their sincere religious or nonreligious beliefs in substantial ways.”
“There are ways in which students could be taught any relevant history of the Ten Commandments without the state selecting an official version of scripture, approving it in state law, and then displaying it in every classroom on a permanent basis,” Biery wrote in his opinion, adding that the law “crosses the line from exposure to coercion.”
See here for more on the appeal, and here for more on that Dallas case. I had wondered what was taking it so long. It hadn’t occurred to me that flaky plaintiffs were the issue. Doesn’t matter much from a big picture perspective, but that’s another group of schools and students that could have been spared this nonsense. Maybe they’ll get their act together before the Fifth Circuit does its thing. KERA, the Current, and the Fort Worth Report have more.
I want a FOIA request to find out the cost to taxpayers to defend these unconstitutional attempts at laws.