There’s a thin line between exposing children to ideas and forcing beliefs on them.
At least, that’s what a federal judge in Texas concluded after he ruled Wednesday that public schools in the state are not allowed to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms.
U.S. District Judge Fed Biery, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, issued a preliminary injunction to temporarily halt enforcement of SB 10, a Texas law that requires public schools to post a Protestant version of the Ten Commandments in classrooms. The law was set to take effect Sept. 1.
“[T]he displays are likely to pressure the child-Plaintiffs into religious observance, meditation on, veneration, and adoption of the State’s favored religious scripture, and into suppressing expression of their own religious or nonreligious background and beliefs while at school,” Biery wrote.
In June, a group of Texas families from diverse denominational backgrounds — some plaintiffs are Jewish, while others are Christian, Hindu, Unitarian Universalist or consider themselves “nonreligious” — sued to stop the law from going into effect, arguing that it was not only a violation of the First Amendment but that the displays would infringe on parents’ rights to raise their children as they saw fit.
