This one is a followup to the first one.
Texas’ Ten Commandments law is facing another legal battle after a coalition of 15 families filed a lawsuit against their school districts to block the mandate to display the religious text in classrooms.
The new lawsuit comes after U.S. District Judge Fred Biery in San Antonio granted a preliminary injunction last month to 16 families suing Houston, Fort Bend, Cy-Fair, Alamo Heights and other school districts. While the lawyers representing the families said the case set a precedent for other districts to follow, Attorney General Ken Paxton directed all other school districts outside of the lawsuit to comply with Senate Bill 10.
Monday’s filing lists 14 districts as defendants, including Conroe ISD, which had previously been cautioned against placing the Ten Commandments up by its district counsel while awaiting Biery’s decision. District officials later said they would comply with the law after Paxton’s directive.
The latest legal battle, which will also play out in San Antonio, builds upon Biery’s ruling last month. It says after that ruling, the plaintiffs’ counsel sent a letter to every school superintendent in Texas not mentioned in the lawsuit, stating that “although the districts may not be technically bound by the court’s ruling, they have an independent legal obligation to respect their students’ constitutional rights.”
Plaintiffs are seeking a declaratory judgment that SB10 is unconstitutional, a temporary restraining order, preliminary injunction and permanent injunctive relief to prevent the school districts from complying with the law, according to the court filing.
It’s an ongoing effort from families of a variety of faith groups, including those who are Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Baha’i, or nonreligious, who believe the Ten Commandments in school interfere with their religious freedom.
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In the case Biery presided over, Paxton’s office represented all school districts with the exception of Austin ISD and Houston ISD. His office did not respond to comment at the time of publication on whether it would represent the districts in the lawsuit filed Monday.
See here, here, and here for the background. After the first ruling was handed down, Ken Paxton was out there telling school districts that were not defendants in that suit that they still had to comply with the new state law, the ruling didn’t apply to them. The ACLU was saying the opposite, that the judge declared the law unconstitutional and other districts should heed that or have a bigger mess to clean up later. This lawsuit is about that mess. My assumption is that another ruling, one that reiterates the first one, will likely make most if not all of the other school districts accept that they have more to fear from the courts than they do from Ken Paxton. I don’t envy them the position they’re in – it really sucks having a lawless, vindictive asshole as the Attorney General – but the law is what it is. We have a chance to elect a better AG next year, so maybe put some thought into that as a possibility. I don’t know what the timeline will be for this, but the outcome seems pretty clear. The ACLU’s press release is here, a copy of the complaint is here, the Fort Worth Report and TPR have more, and I still have no idea what the situation is with the lawsuit that was filed in North Texas.