Texas school districts defy court, face new lawsuit over Ten Commandments posters

Civil liberties groups just filed a new lawsuit against Texas school districts that ignored a federal judge's recent ruling

This newsletter is free and goes out to over 22,000 subscribers, but it’s only able to sustain itself due to the support I receive from a small percentage of regular readers. Would you please consider becoming one of those supporters? You can use the button below to subscribe or use my usual Patreon page!

---

Ever since a federal judge blocked certain Texas school districts from putting up posters of the Ten Commandments in every classroom, there’s been a quiet war raging between conservatives and people who actually take the Constitution seriously. In fact, there have been three significant developments in the month since that decision came down.

A Ten Commandments monument (image via Adobe Spark)

A quick recap before we get into all that. Earlier this year, Texas passed a bill to post the Decalogue in public schools—King James’ Version only. The law also included a provision requiring the attorney general of the state to defend districts that get sued over this... which is a fancy way of saying taxpayers would be the ones screwed over if liberals tried to fight this in court.

One major lawsuit came anyway. 16 families challenged the law and they were represented by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the ACLU of Texas, the ACLU (national), and the Freedom From Religion Foundation. (Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP assisted with the case for free.) Those were basically the same groups that filed similar lawsuits in both Louisiana and Arkansas.

Last month, a federal judge sided with the church/state separation crowd, putting a temporary hold on the ridiculous law. The downside is that his ruling only applied to the school districts connected to the plaintiffs in the case. At least until his final order came down.

So what are the three developments that have occurred since then?

First, both parties have attempted to argue the law is on their side. The church/state separation crowd sent a letter to superintendents across the state on August 21 explaining the judge’s ruling, advising them not to put up posters when the school year begins, and threatening to sue them if they didn’t listen.

Even though your district is not a party to the ongoing lawsuit, all school districts have an independent obligation to respect students’ and families’ constitutional rights. Because the U.S. Constitution supersedes state law, public-school officials may not comply with S.B. 10.

…

In light of the court’s August 20 ruling that S.B. 10 is unconstitutional, any school district that implements S.B. 10 will be violating the First Amendment and could be inviting additional litigation. We thus urge you to respect the First Amendment rights of Texas students and families by not posting the Ten Commandments displays pursuant to S.B. 10 and/or immediately removing any displays of the Ten Commandments that have already been posted in your district’s classrooms.

Days later, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton gave them different advice: He said if the districts weren’t directly involved in the lawsuit, they could go ahead and put up the posters. Because the alternative was “woke.”

“From the beginning, the Ten Commandments have been irrevocably intertwined with America’s legal, moral, and historical heritage,” said Attorney General Paxton. “Schools not enjoined by ongoing litigation must abide by S.B. 10 and display the Ten Commandments. The woke radicals seeking to erase our nation’s history will be defeated. I will not back down from defending the virtues and values that built this country.”

That left nearly every school district caught between listening to a right-wing extremist who has a lot of power in the state or a coalition of First Amendment experts who would sue them if they violated the law. Which led to the next development…

When the school year finally began, some school districts went the Ken Paxton route and told teachers they needed the poster in their classrooms. An NBC News article, however, noted that some teachers planned to defy (or were already defying!) the Christian Nationalist intent of the law by including other posters around the Christian one. Most of those teachers requested anonymity in the piece.

… a[n unnamed] teacher in southeast Texas said she’s playing a “risky game” after deciding she won’t display the Ten Commandments in her classroom at all. But if she must, she said, she will hang it upside down.

…

The [unnamed] teacher said her district is diverse, and because her school includes students of different religions, she decided to hang posters of other religions’ tenets around the Ten Commandments poster. The displays include the Five Pillars of Islam, the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism and a list of Hinduism’s ethical principles, which include nonviolence and truthfulness.

…

Ajha Farrow, who teaches English and theater to students ages 10 to 14 in a rural area of north Texas, said a local church has announced it would be donating posters soon.

When that happens, Farrow said, she plans to design a “world religions wall” to be inclusive of all faiths and ideologies.

Teachers at her school have the ability to post “sentimental things” in their classrooms, she added.

“We have teachers who have Bible verses, as well as teachers who have photos of them with their LGBTQIA+ partners. That freedom should be there,” Farrow said. “But to mandate one walk of life, one religion, it’s extremely unconstitutional. And I plan to be as maliciously compliant as possible so that all of my students, regardless of religion, or lack thereof, feel valued, comfortable and seen.”

The third development may be the most significant. You may recall that Arkansas’ Ten Commandments law was also struck down by a federal judge—though that ruling also applied only to the specific districts involved in the lawsuit—but one other school district went ahead and put up the posters anyway when the school year began.

The church/state lawyers immediately went into action and asked the judge if their complaint—the one he already issued a ruling about—could be amended to include this other school district, too. The judge said yes and his temporary order quickly extended to the district that got caught.

In Texas, the problem is much worse. While the federal judge’s initial order only applied to 11 school districts across the state, there are plenty of districts that have since taken Ken Paxton’s advice and put the Commandments up on their own.

Now the church/state lawyers are going after them.

Yesterday, they announced that had filed a new lawsuit targeting those additional districts for which there’s proof they put up the Christian displays.

The plaintiffs in Cribbs Ringer v. Comal Independent School District also plan to file a motion for a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction, asking the court to require the defendant school districts to remove any Ten Commandments displays currently posted and to refrain from hanging new displays pending the resolution of the litigation. The school districts named as defendants in today’s lawsuit include: Comal ISD, Georgetown ISD, Conroe ISD, Flour Bluff ISD, Fort Worth ISD, Arlington ISD, McKinney ISD, Frisco ISD, Northwest ISD, Azle ISD, Rockwall ISD, Lovejoy ISD, Mansfield ISD, and McAllen ISD.

On that list, Conroe ISD, Fort Worth ISD, Arlington ISD, and Frisco ISD rank among the 25 largest school districts in the state. (The original lawsuit included North East ISD, Northside ISD, Austin ISD, Houston ISD, Fort Bend ISD, Cypress-Fairbanks ISD, and Plano ISD, which are all also in the top 25.)

This lawsuit is essentially identical to the one they filed earlier, with the Plaintiffs and their school districts being the main changes. But there’s also this note near the beginning reminding the judge that he already sided with the church/state crowd on this one:

Last month, this district court ruled that S.B. 10 is “plainly unconstitutional” and likely violates the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment… And in June, the U.S Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held the same regarding a Louisiana statute similar to S.B. 10…

Despite these precedents, the Defendant School Districts have pressed forward with actually posting S.B. 10 displays in classrooms, or have confirmed they will do so shortly—even after receiving a letter from plaintiffs’ counsel in Nathan notifying them of the Nathan court’s ruling and warning that all school districts have an independent legal obligation to comply with the ruling and avoid violating children’s and parents’ First Amendment rights.

The lawsuit also lays out how they know each district in question has or plans to put up the posters in question, like with Frisco ISD, which they say “has installed 4,805 Ten Commandments posters across 77 campuses, purchased by the District for approximately $1,800.”

This should be an open-and-shut case. If the previous ruling said the Ten Commandments posters were unconstitutional, that should still apply here, and it shouldn’t take very long for the judge to say so.

As I said when the same thing happened in Arkansas, what’s happening here isn’t just a local skirmish. It’s a warning for every district tempted to play politics with the Constitution. While staffers and administrators should be focused on making sure students get the best education possible, they’re distracted by their own goal of putting up state-sponsored religious indoctrination posters masquerading as history.

There’s no reason to gamble with taxpayer dollars by putting up Christian signs that have no educational value out of context. Even if Ken Paxton, a Christian zealot who will say and do anything to win his GOP primary for U.S. Senate, tells them otherwise.

The lesson here is brutal but straightforward: If you defy the courts, you’ll be dragged into them. If other districts want to play this game, they’re going to lose too. So it’s better to listen to the church/state separation groups than the Christian Nationalists running the state government.

The Constitution doesn’t bend to their faith, and neither will the courts.

---