TEXAS – A group of 15 multifaith and nonreligious Texas families has filed a new lawsuit in federal court on Monday to stop their public school districts from displaying the Ten Commandments in classrooms.
The new complaint comes in response to school districts that have or are about to display Ten Commandments posters in response to Senate Bill 10.
In late May, lawmakers convened and passed Senate Bill 10(SB 10), a law that would require all public schools to display a framed poster at least 16 by 20 inches, listing the Ten Commandments.
But, in August, a federal court temporarily blocked the state law requiring the 10 Commandments to be displayed. A group of Dallas-area families and faith leaders sought a preliminary injunction against the law, which went into effect on Sept. 1. They said the requirement violated the First Amendment’s protections for the separation of church and state and the right to free religious exercise.
The school districts named in the lawsuit include: Comal ISD, Georgetown ISD, Conroe 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.
The complaint, filed in a San Antonio federal court, points to the court’s recent decision in Rabbi Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District, which held that S.B. 10’s provisions requiring the display of a Protestant version of the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom are “plainly unconstitutional” under the First Amendment. The plaintiffs in both cases are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, the ACLU, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation, with Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP serving as pro bono counsel.
“As a devout Christian and a Lutheran pastor, the spiritual formation of my children is a privilege I take more seriously than anything else in my life,” said Rev. Kristin Klade (she/her), plaintiff. “The mandated Ten 10 Commandments displayed in my children’s public school impedes my ability to ‘train up my child in the way he should go’ (Proverbs 22:6). I address questions about God and faith with great care, and I emphatically reject the notion that the state would do this for me.”
Religious groups and conservatives say the Ten Commandments are part of the foundation of the United States’ judicial and educational systems and should be displayed. Texas has a Ten Commandments monument on the Capitol grounds and won a 2005 Supreme Court case that upheld the monument.
In Louisiana — the first state that mandated the Ten Commandments be displayed in classrooms — a panel of three appellate judges ruled in June that the law was unconstitutional.