A Texas law that would require the Ten Commandments from the Christian Bible to be displayed in every public school has received a temporary block from a federal judge in the United States.
US District Judge Fred Biery issued a preliminary injunction on Wednesday against Texas’s Senate Bill 10, which was scheduled to go into effect on September 1.
Texas would have become the state with the most public schools in the nation.
However, Judge Biery’s decision is in line with two other court decisions made in the past month, both of which declared that unconstitutional laws in Arkansas and Louisiana.
The First Amendment of the US Constitution, which forbids the government from passing laws “respecting an establishment of religion,” opens Biery’s decision. In the US, the separation of church and state is supported by that clause.
The judge then contends that even “passive” Ten Commandments displays could potentially violate the separation by introducing religious discourse into the classroom.
The captive audience of students is likely to have questions that teachers feel compelled to respond to, even though the Ten Commandments would not be affirmatively taught. That is what Biery argued.
“Teenage boys might ask, “Mrs. Walker, I know about lying and I love my parents, but how do I commit adultery,” given their peculiar hormonally driven nature. For overworked and underpaid educators who already have to deal with issues involving sex education, this is undoubtedly an awkward situation.
However, Alamo Heights, Houston, Austin, Fort Bend, and Plano are just a few of the 11 school districts that are represented by the defendants in Biery’s decision.
A number of parents of children who were school-aged and who were represented by organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Americans United for Separation of Church and State filed a complaint.
A San Antonio rabbi, Mara Nathan, filed a lawsuit because she thought the Ten Commandments’ presentation was incompatible with Jewish teachings. In a statement from the ACLU, she applauded the injunction on Wednesday.
Parents and faith communities, not politicians and public schools, should teach children’s religious beliefs, Nathan said.
Other plaintiffs included Christian families who feared that religious interpretations and ideas might be taught through the Ten Commandments’ school displays.
However, the Texas state government has argued that schools are required to have copies of the Ten Commandments because they represent a significant component of American culture.
The Ten Commandments are a pillar of our moral and legal heritage, according to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who issued a statement. They are a reminder of the principles that underlie responsible citizenship. He said he would appeal the decision on Wednesday.
Judge Biery, who was appointed by Democratic President Bill Clinton in 1994, drew on a range of cultural references to create a history of the dangers of imposing religion on the populace.
At one point, Biery remarked, “The displays are likely to pressure the child-Plaintiffs into religious observance, meditation on, veneration, and adoption of the State’s preferred religious scripture.”
He added that “these displays run the risk of suppressing the children’s] own religious or nonreligious beliefs while they are in school.”
Biery even shared a winking, personal anecdote to illustrate how powerful governments are in favor of religious freedom.
In fact, a Methodist preacher said to a judge who was at the time, “Fred, if you had been born in Tibet, you would be a Buddhist,” Biery wrote.
The Ten Commandment requirement is also challenged in a separate federal case involving Dallas-area schools. The Texas Education Agency is a defendant, according to the document.
The Supreme Court, which currently has a six-to-three conservative supermajority and has shown sympathy for cases involving religious displays, is likely to eventually hear these cases.
In Kennedy v. Bremerton School District in 2022, for example, the Supreme Court agreed with a high school football coach who claimed he had the right to hold post-game prayers despite concerns that they might be in violation of the First Amendment. For his actions, the coach had been fired.
Judge Biery nods off to how contentious these kinds of cases can be in his decision on Wednesday. However, he made a prayer-like flourish to plead for understanding.
Source: Aljazeera
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