General Discussion

For Republican officials eager to impose the Ten Commandments on public school students, it’s been a difficult year. In June, for example, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked a Louisiana law from taking effect, unanimously ruling that the state-sponsored religion law was “facially unconstitutional.”

In early August, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction against a similar Arkansas law on Ten Commandments displays in schools.

Now Texas has joined the club. The New York Times reported:

A federal judge ordered some public school districts in Texas on Tuesday to remove Ten Commandment displays from their classroom walls by next month, a victory for families who had argued that the posters infringed on their religious freedom. The ruling from Judge Orlando L. Garcia … applies to 14 public school districts, including ones in Fort Worth, Arlington and Conroe.

In his ruling, Garcia wrote that “it is impracticable, if not impossible, to prevent plaintiffs from being subjected to unwelcome religious displays” without stopping school districts from enforcing that law.

The ruling comes roughly three months after a different federal court reached the same conclusion in a related case filed by several Dallas-area families and faith leaders.......

So why would Republicans in several states take a step that the Supreme Court has already rejected? It’s likely because they’re confident that the newly politicized high court and its dominant far-right majority will simply overturn the Stone precedent, doing fresh harm to the wall that’s supposed to separate church and state in this country.

These GOP officials are almost certainly aware of the First Amendment, just as they’re almost certainly aware of the Supreme Court precedent that says they cannot legally do what they’re trying to do. But since the court has moved sharply to the right in the course of the last 45 years, GOP officials in Texas and others are counting on Republican-appointed justices to clear the way for more government-imposed religion in public schools.

That hasn’t happened — at least not yet — which is why these state measures keep losing in court in the meantime.