Judge ruled Texas’s new Ten Commandments display law was likely unconstitutional and ordered districts to remove the posters by early December.
A federal judge in Texas has ordered several public school districts to remove classroom displays of the Ten Commandments and barred them from posting new ones, ruling that a new state law requiring the displays likely violates the First Amendment.
In a Nov. 18 preliminary injunction, U.S. District Judge Orlando L. Garcia found that Senate Bill 10—which mandates large, readable Ten Commandments posters in every public-school classroom—runs afoul of the Establishment Clause’s prohibition on government endorsement of religion.
The ruling requires the defendant districts to take down the displays by Dec. 1 and later certify their compliance.
“Displaying the Ten Commandments on the wall of a public-school classroom as set forth in S.B. 10 violates the Establishment Clause,” Garcia wrote.
He rejected a request from the defendant districts to narrow the injunction just to specific classrooms or schools attended by the child-plaintiffs in the lawsuit that challenged Texas’s Ten Commandments display requirement.
The judge noted that, because students move between classrooms and campuses for required and extracurricular activities, “It is impracticable, if not impossible, to prevent Plaintiffs from being subjected to unwelcome religious displays without enjoining Defendants from enforcing S.B. 10 across their districts.”
The lawsuit was filed in September by 15 families from Christian, Jewish, Hindu, atheist, agnostic, and other backgrounds.
The families argued that the state-mandated postings pressured their children to adopt or appear to endorse a specific religious teaching.
While the plaintiffs practice different faiths, Garcia said, they share one objection: “Plaintiffs do not wish their children to be pressured to observe, venerate, or adopt the religious doctrine contained in the Ten Commandments.”
The Epoch Times has reached out to the Texas Attorney General’s office, which is defending S.B. 10, for comment.
By Tom Ozimek
