The state Senate advanced a Texas bill on Wednesday that would order the ten commandments in all the classrooms of the public schools, the state Senate, sent the legislation to the desk of Governor Greg Abbott after the House of Representatives approved a version amended on Sunday.
The Senate approved the bill 10 of the Senate of the Republican Party in March along the party lines. Despite the debate and attempts to delay the progress of the bill in the Chamber in recent days, the amendment of a Democratic legislator who requires that the State, instead of the school districts, defends any legal challenge to the law was approved on Sunday. Such change forced the bill to return to the Senate for approval with only remaining days in the current legislative session.
With that approval instead, ABBOTT, a Republican, is expected to sign the bill. His spokesman sent a request for comments to what Abbott published in X earlier this month: “We are going to take this bill to my desk. I will make it law.”
Texas, the second largest state with more than 5 million students enrolled in public schools, would follow Louisiana and, more recently, Arkansas in approval of legislation that requires that the ten commandments be shown in the classroom.
But like Louisiana, Texas could face a flood of legal challenges about the constitutionality of the law.
Louisiana has not fully implemented its legislation after a coalition of parents of different religions filed a federal lawsuit a few days after the GOV. Jeff Landry will sign the bill, a Republican. A judge in November was put on the side of those parents when he concluded that the State had not offered “any constitutional way to show the ten commandments.”
Louisiana officials appealed, but a ruling has not been issued.
Now, with other states that approved their own laws, the arguments could eventually end again before the United States Supreme Court, which in 1980 ruled that the exhibitions in the classroom of the ten commandments were unconstitutional.
But a wave of new laws and mandates in states, particularly in the south, after having begun to prove the limits of what can be legally permissible when it comes to religion in public schools.
Under the Texas bill, all public or secondary primary schools would have to “show in a remarkable place in each classroom a lasting poster or a framed copy of the ten commandments.” The screens would have to be at least 16 inches for 20 inches and include the text of the ten commandments written on the bill.
Once the bill is registered in the law, schools “must accept any offer of private donations exhibitions” or can use funds from the district, from the 2025-26 school year.
The legislation does not have an application mechanism, and it is not clear what could happen with the individual schools or teachers who refuse to comply.
State Senator Phil King, the main author of the bill, said he believes that the legislation represents the scrutiny after a ruling of the 2022 Supreme Court who found that a former soccer coach of the high school of the state of Washington had the right to pray in the field immediately after the games. The ruling of the conservative majority court adopted a different approach when examining “historical practices and understandings” to interpret whether the first amendment was being violated.
“Now that the United States Supreme Court has reversed a previous erroneous decision, which was taken from our students can now be legitimately restored,” King said in a statement on Wednesday. “I hope to have the ten commandments, a fundamental historical document for the history and character of our nation, in Texas schools.”
In arguments against the bill during the debate, state representative James Talarico, Democrat and Christian said that the specific publication of the ten commandments would give the appearance that the State is favoring a religion over others to the detriment of non -Christian students. He also questioned whether state legislators had ever broken any of the commandments.
Other Democrats and critics asked why parents and school districts could not have an option about whether to allow the ten commandments in the classrooms, when some Republicans have expressed about wanting parents to decide which books and topics are allowed in schools.
“Texas families deeply believe in faith, but also believe in freedom,” Rocío Fierro-Pérez, political director of the Texas Freedom Network, who has opposed the legislation of the ten commandments, said in a statement. “Freedom to raise your children according to their own values. Freedom of government interference in personal beliefs. That is what is really under attack here.”
But the bill is not the only religious that obtains the approval of this legislative session, after Texas legislators approved a bill that would allow school districts to adopt policies that allow a period of prayer in schools and the reading of the Bible or “other religious text” with the consent of the parents. ABBOTT is also expected to sign it.
