Ohio Republicans advance bill that would flood schools with Ten Commandments posters

Senate Bill 34 hides a Christian Nationalist agenda behind a veneer of American history

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The Ohio House is now considering a bill that would allow Christian zealots to get monuments of the Ten Commandments erected outside schools and posters of the Decalogue put up in certain classrooms. But you may not know that by a casual reading of the bill, which recently passed through the Republican-led State Senate on a 23-10 vote.

Senate Bill 34 is officially called the “Enact the Historical Educational Displays Act.” It says every school district needs to select “at least four” of the following “founding documents” to post in every history or social studies classroom for students in grades 4-12:

(a) The Mayflower Compact;

(b) The Declaration of Independence;

(c) The Northwest Ordinance;

(d) In accordance with section 3313.801 of the Revised Code, the mottoes of the United States and Ohio;

(e) The Ten Commandments;

(f) The Magna Carta;

(g) The Bill of Rights;

(h) The United States Constitution;

(i) The Articles of Confederation.

Notice how they just wedged the Ten Commandments in there—right in the middle—even though it’s not a “founding document” in any sense of that phrase.

State Sen. Terry Johnson seems to think this sort of phrasing would give cover to Christians who would force their local school boards to put up the Ten Commandments in classrooms because the bill doesn’t explicitly say that list needs to go up… but it’s a distinction without a difference. So is a caveat that says any poster or monument must include a disclaimer explaining the subject’s “historical importance that serves an educational purpose.”

State Sen. Terry Johnson (screenshot via YouTube)

“This bill will expose our students to the documents which have, in America, served as the backbone of our legal and moral traditions,” Johnson said.

Johnson gave away the game soon after he introduced the bill. He said the posters didn’t have to be any larger than “a simple 8 ½” x 11” print out.” But you just can’t get the text of the Constitution on a piece of paper unless the font is so tiny that no one will ever be able to read it. Acknowledging this, he hilariously added: “More sizable documents such as the U.S. Constitution, Articles of Confederation, Northwest Ordinance, and Magna Carta may require more formatting, as long as it remains reasonably visible.”

Right. “More formatting.” That’s the solution.

He knows damn well no student is going to read the Constitution because it’s posted on the wall in tiny letters. And he doesn’t care because this bill isn’t about putting the Constitution in classrooms. It’s about promoting Christianity. Nothing more.

We know that because, hidden in the text of the bill, is another section that says school boards must accept “donated funds or displays” as long as there are no strings attached to them.

(D)(1) The board of education of each school district that receives donated funds or displays shall comply with this section not later than July 1, 2026. This section does not apply to a school district that does not receive donated funds or displays.

(2) The board shall determine the amount of funds or donations required to comply with division (A) or (B) of this section and may do either of the following to fund the displays free of charge:

(a) Accept the total amount of donated funds necessary to purchase the displays;

(b) Accept donated displays.

(3) A board of education is not required to accept funds or donated displays that contain limitations or conditions on the acceptance or use of those funds or donations.

So if—hypothetically speaking, of course—a church decided to donate enough money for a school to purchase a Ten Commandments monument, the school board would be obligated to buy it.

Or consider the more likely scenario: If this bill passes, some national Christian group would just send a batch of Ten Commandments posters to every public school district in the state, requiring them to put up those signs in every classroom.

Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio even pointed that out to the media:

“Did you notice that little piece in there — if someone gives [documents], if someone donates them, that they need to then display them?” Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio (D-Lakewood) said.

Antonio, a former educator, said it’s unconstitutional to put religious texts in public school classrooms.

“To present to those children that a document from a religious practice is above all others is inappropriate,” Antonio continued. “It’s not what the founders intended, it goes totally against the separation of church and state, and I think it’s an abomination.”

Unfortunately, Ohio Republicans aren’t in the business of doing what’s best for the state. They’re only there to act as rubber stamps for the Trump administration and Christian Nationalists.

It doesn’t seem to bother them that Ten Commandments laws in other states have face numerous lawsuits and the states have, so far, lost every single one of them. (The notoriously conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals could undo that streak after they hear a case in January involving Ten Commandments laws in Texas and Louisiana.)

When the ACLU of Ohio testified against this bill earlier in the year, the group’s chief lobbyist, Gary Daniels, made very clear that this bill was just a vehicle for Christian indoctrination. Don’t be fooled by the illusion of choice, he implied, because this was all a game designed to get one document and only one document up in classrooms. And if a lawsuit was filed to stop it, well, that’s also part of the plan.

In the case of SB 34, passage of this bill will result in Ten Commandments displays in all classrooms, in all schools, in some school districts. Other schools will surely opt for Ten Commandments monuments on school grounds, purposely situated for students to pass every day as they enter school. Both scenarios are permitted and envisioned via SB 34.

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Supporters of SB 34 try to wave away these concerns in two distinct ways. First, they accurately point out the Ten Commandments is but one choice a school district can make for display among a list of other historical documents, such as the Magna Carta, Declaration of Independence, and so on. SB 34 forces no school to display the Ten Commandments, they say.

Those claims are true. They also do not reflect ongoing plotting and practical realities. You see, passage of SB 34 is only the first step for many SB 34 supporters. Pass this bill, and they will focus their energy and resources on school districts across Ohio, demanding they choose the Ten Commandments as one of the document(s) for display. Or perhaps the only one.

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The Ten Commandments are not the Ten Helpful Hints. They are not the Ten Friendly Suggestions. They are, as the name suggests, commandments. Religious commandments. Do not worship other gods, there is only one. On one particular day of the week, you must worship this god. You are forbidden from referring to this god in a dishonorable or profane way. There is no way to secularize or dilute this language to strip it of its religious significance.

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Indeed, the motivation of many SB 34 supporters is official imposition of their particular religious beliefs on those who do not share them. It is the hijacking of government and schools to make it happen. It follows the same playbook as the decades of effort that resulted in the overturning of Roe v. Wade. It is the same playbook now openly described and being fashioned to target legal same-sex marriage. It is a playbook designed to generate lawsuits, get those cases before sympathetic judges, and hope for what they think is the best outcome.

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Of course, it does not have to be this way. Schools do not need SB 34 to display historical documents in their classrooms or on their grounds. Schools should not be pawns in larger culture wars.

Everything Daniels said there is accurate. There’s nothing stopping schools from putting up posters of the Constitution or the Magna Carta right now. This bill doesn’t change anything… except it creates a pathway for Christians to get the Ten Commandments in public schools while pretending the bill is totally not about that. (If only there was a Commandment against lying…)

Douglas Berger, President of the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie, also testified against the bill and called out the right-wing playbook: “Including all the real historical documents gives cover for the religious ones in the hopes that most schools will pick the religious ones and that would give the legislature cover from the obvious ethical violation of the 1st amendment.”

And while some Republicans will argue the Ten Commandments are historical, that’s obvious bullshit:

“The actual Ten Commandments are not found in our Constitution, but the principles of many of our founders came from a biblical understanding that all of our rights come from God,” Sen. Andrew Brenner (R-Delaware) said on the Senate floor last Wednesday. “A lot of these are coming from a biblical basis, and that is what our society and our country and our state is based on.”

There’s a huge gap between saying some of the founders thought our rights come from God and elevating a list of 10 specific religious demands, most of which are purely religious and many of which are fully dismissed by our laws.

When the bill was being considered in the State Senate, an amendment was proposed to just remove the Ten Commandments from the list of documents. Republicans, on a party-line vote, shot down that amendment.

In any case, the bill now sits in the State House where Republicans will once again have to decide if they want to force public schools to waste their time in a way that doesn’t help students and just creates more unnecessary division… or just do their jobs. Hard to imagine they’ll suddenly start doing the latter.

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