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Posters featuring the Ten Commandments began going up almost a
year ago in classrooms across Texas, which educates about 5.5
million students. An appeals court earlier this year cleared the
way for Texas' law and one in Louisiana, and similar laws have
been passed in Arkansas and Alabama.
“This is an issue of nationwide importance because a number of
states have been considering these laws in recent years,” said
Heather Weaver, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties
Union.
Over two dozen Texas families represented by the ACLU and other
groups petitioned the nation’s highest court to hear their
challenge after the conservative-leaning 5th U.S. Circuit Court
of Appeals in April upheld the Texas law in a 9-8 ruling.
“We would like for the Supreme Court to make clear that singling
out Scripture for display in public schools is a violation of
the First Amendment,” Weaver said.
The office for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton did not
immediately comment Monday.
In the families' Supreme Court brief, their attorneys argue that
the law violates basic First Amendment principles governing the
separation of church and state.
"The question of whether a state may impose scripture on
impressionable, captive-audience children — for nearly every
hour of every school day, for up to (13) years — implicates the
most fundamental guarantees of the First Amendment and our
Nation’s highest ideals," they wrote.
The New Orleans-based 5th Circuit reversed lower federal court
rulings that had blocked some Texas school districts from
putting up the posters.
Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed the law, which took effect
last September. Because Texas’ law only requires districts to
hang the Ten Commandments if they are donated, conservative
groups and individuals began dropping off boxes of posters at
campuses across the state as the school year began last year.
“No child is made to recite the Commandments, believe them, or
affirm their divine origin,” the 5th Circuit's ruling says.
In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a similar Kentucky
law violated the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution,
which says Congress can “make no law respecting an establishment
of religion.” The high court found that the law had no secular
purpose but rather served a plainly religious purpose.
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Stengle contributed to this report from Dallas.
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