AUSTIN, Texas – Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said Thursday that he’s opened an investigation into public school districts making sure they are complying with a state law requiring schools post copies of the Ten Commandments in classrooms.
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In a statement Thursday, Paxton said he was requiring more than two dozen schools to “produce documents regarding the display or lack thereof of the Ten Commandments and their policies regarding SB 10.”
Paxton sent the demands to 29 districts: Alamo Heights, North East, Austin, Cypress-Fairbanks, Lackland, Lake Travis, Fort Bend, Houston, Dripping Springs, Plano, Northside, Conroe, Galveston, Dallas, Fort Worth, Lubbock, Wichita Falls, McAllen, Amarillo, El Paso, Corpus Christi, United, Texarkana, Victoria, Waco, Abilene, San Angelo, Brownsville, and Beaumont.
What they’re saying:
“Texas schools districts must comply with Texas law by displaying the Ten Commandments and taking a school board vote regarding the implementation of prayer time in schools,” Paxton said. “I will never stop defending our students’ religious freedom and the moral foundation of our nation.”
Senate Bill 11 requires school boards to vote on if the district would set aside time for students and staff to pray. School board members were supposed to vote on prayer time by March 1.
Court rules Texas public schools can display Ten Commandments
The backstory:
The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal ruled last month that displays of the Ten Commandments can remain in Texas public schools.
The court ruled Texas’ Senate Bill 10 does not violate the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause or the Free Exercise Clause.
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What they’re saying:
“S.B. 10 looks nothing like a historical religious establishment. It does not tell churches or synagogues or mosques what to believe or how to worship or whom to employ as priests, rabbis, or imams,” the court said. “It punishes no one who rejects the Ten Commandments, no matter the reason.”
The court was split on the decision, with Judge Stephen Higgenson penning a dissent saying the majority opinion ignored decades of Supreme Court precedent because they felt a single decision was outdated.
“Our court accommodates their unconstitutional request, supplanting decades of Supreme Court precedent merely because of a single decision the majority deems outdated,” Higgenson said. “In doing so, the majority defies foundational First Amendment concepts, ignores the harms students will face, and usurps parents’ rights to determine the religious beliefs they wish to instill in their own children.”
Senate Bill 10
The backstory:
Senate Bill 10 requires every public school classroom to display the Christian Ten Commandments. The bill was approved by Gov. Abbott in late June.
The law requires a “durable poster or framed copy” of the Ten Commandments be posted in each classroom. The copies would need to be at least 16 inches wide and 20 inches tall and “in a size and typeface that is legible to a person with average vision from anywhere in the classroom.”
FOX Local has reached out to several of the named school districts for comment and have not heard back.
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