Senate Bill 10, a bill that requires the Ten Commandments to be displayed in all Texas public school classrooms passed the Senate with a final vote of 82-46 on Sunday, sending the legislation to Gov. Greg Abbott to be signed into law. Abbott, a Republican, expressed his support of the bill early this month when he posted on X, “Let’s get this bill to my desk. I’ll make it law.”
The bill was originally passed in March with majority Republican support although Democrats attempted to stall the bill for additional amendments including requiring other religious texts from Hinduism, Islam, and Buddhism to be posted in classrooms although those amendments were rejected.
Under the law, schools would be required to place a copy of the Ten Commandments in a ‘conspicuous place in each classroom’. The display must be a minimum of 16 inches by 20 inches and include the text of the Ten Commandments as written in the bill.
Although there are no details about non-compliance, according to the Washington Post, the bill includes provisions which mention the state, rather than individual districts, as defending any legal challenges regarding the school’s compliance. The bill states that no school would be exempt and schools that do not post the document would be required to ‘accept any offer of a privately donated poster or framed copy.’
Other states have already attempted to pass legislation requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in schools including Louisiana and Arkansas. Louisiana, however, has not been able to implement the legislation after a federal lawsuit was filed by parents who claimed that “public schools were not Sunday schools.” A judge in November sided with those parents when he ruled the state’s order was unconstitutional. Similarly, Texas could experience legal pushback over the constitutionality of the law due to the separation of church and state.
Critics have made the argument that the law violates the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause which prohibits public schools from requiring students to recite prayers or provide religious instruction, while supporters attempt to associate the religious document with U.S. history in an effort to insert it into the curriculum.
In arguments against the bill during debate, state Rep. James Talarico, a McNeil alum and Democrat, said the posting of the Ten Commandments would disregard the beliefs of non-Christian students and questioned if lawmakers had ever broken any of the commandments.
“My faith means more to me than anything, but I don’t believe the government should be forcing religion onto any American citizen, especially our children,” Talarico told the Texas Tribune. “I’m a Christian who firmly believes in the separation of church and state.”
This measure is one of several religion-related bills passed in the current legislative session. Texas lawmakers passed a bill that would permit school districts to install a period of prayer and religious text readings–including the Bible–with parental consent, a direct contradiction to the Establishment Clause.
As both sides debate the legality of the law, Republicans on Monday advanced Senate Bill 13, introduced by Senator Angela Paxton (R-McKinney). SB 13 is a bill which would give local school boards the authority to remove books from school libraries and would allow parents to challenge any book. Democrats have been outspoken about the hypocrisy of the Republican party due to promoting religious texts and freedom of speech while at the same time restricting access to content they deem as inappropriate.
