A federal court in San Antonio heard arguments Friday in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a Texas law mandating the display of the Ten Commandments in all public-school classrooms in the state.
Senate Bill 10 mandates that, starting Sept. 1, all public-school classrooms in Texas must display a state-approved version of the Ten Commandments, using an explicitly Protestant translation derived from the King James Bible. At Friday's hearing, plaintiffs' attorneys sought an injunction to prevent the law from going into effect, pending the outcome of the court challenge.
Lawyers for those objecting to the law said in court that posting the Ten Commandments "quote obviously violates" the freedom of religion guaranteed in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
"The posting of the Ten Commandments violates our clients' and Texas families' religious freedom. It violates our Constitution's promise of separation of church and state, and the First Amendment guarantees that our clients should be able to decide what they believe in, or not, not politicians," Amy Tai, senior litigation counsel for the Americans United for Separation of Church and State, told Houston Public Media.
Americans United is one of four civil liberties organizations representing 16 Texas families of varying religious and nonreligious backgrounds in the lawsuit, filed against school districts in the Austin, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio areas. The Houston-area schools listed as defendants are Houston ISD, Cy-Fair ISD and Fort Bend ISD.
A lawyer for the Texas Attorney General's Office, representing the school districts, said the required classroom Ten Commandments poster is a "passive display," "does not create injury," and there is no enforcement provision in the law – so school districts could decide to ignore the law.
The state also argued the Ten Commandments are foundational for the American system of laws. That reiterates arguments the authors of SB 10 made on the floors of the Senate and House during debates prior to voting on the law.
The first witness called by the plaintiffs testified that many of the ideas in the commandments were "parallel" to American law but not unique.
If U.S. Judge Fred Berry grants a temporary injunction to block SB 10, it would apply only to the school districts directly involved in the case. All other school districts would have to decide on their own whether to follow SB 10.
The Texas lawsuit follows similar litigation challenging nearly identical laws passed by two other states. A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has blocked the enforcement of Louisiana's Ten Commandments display law throughout that state. A federal court in Arkansas has blocked enforcement of that state's Ten Commandments law in multiple Arkansas school districts.