A new legal battle over faith in public life is unfolding in Texas, where a federal judge has ordered several public school districts to remove posters of the Ten Commandments from their classrooms. The injunction is the latest development in a growing national debate over whether displaying religious texts in public schools violates the First Amendment.
According to reporting from the Washington Post, Judge Orlando L. Garcia of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas issued a preliminary injunction Tuesday directing 14 school districts to take down the posters by next month. The ruling temporarily halts the state’s effort to enforce a law signed by Gov. Greg Abbott earlier this year that would require every public-school classroom to display the Ten Commandments in a “conspicuous location.”
The law, passed in June, mandated posters at least 16 inches wide and 20 inches tall, with text “legible to a person with average vision from anywhere in the classroom,” according to the Washington Post’s summary of the statute.
Supporters of the mandate have argued that the Ten Commandments reflect “a foundational part of U.S. history and culture,” but opponents, including families of various religious backgrounds, challenged the law as a violation of the Establishment Clause. Fifteen families filed a legal complaint in September, contending the mandate forces students to be exposed to religious doctrine against their will.
Judge Garcia agreed that the law likely violates the First Amendment. In the injunction, he wrote that “it is impracticable, if not impossible, to prevent plaintiffs from being subjected to unwelcome religious displays” unless the requirement is blocked. He added that the families are likely to succeed because the state’s mandate “violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment,” according to the Washington Post.
The families represented in the lawsuit come from a wide spectrum of beliefs. Garcia noted that the parents “do not wish their children be pressured to observe, venerate, or adopt the religious doctrine contained in the Ten Commandments,” pointing out that they include atheist, agnostic, Christian, Jewish, Baha’i, and Hindu households.
One parent, Lenee Bien-Willner, expressed relief following the decision. “My children, who are among a small number of Jewish children at their schools, will no longer be continually subjected to religious displays,” she said in a statement shared by the ACLU and quoted by the Washington Post. She added, “The government has no business interfering with parental decisions about matters of faith.”
This ruling follows a similar injunction issued in August by another federal judge, which temporarily blocked the mandate in 11 other school districts. When combined, roughly 20 percent of Texas public school students now attend schools where the law cannot be enforced, according to the Washington Post.
The issue is also playing out beyond Texas. Earlier this year, a panel of judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit described a Louisiana law requiring Ten Commandments posters in classrooms as “plainly unconstitutional,” the Post reported. In Arkansas, a U.S. district judge issued another preliminary injunction blocking a related mandate.
Texas officials are expected to present their case in January as federal appeals courts weigh the constitutionality of these laws — a debate that touches not only on legal principles but on deeper questions about faith and public life in a pluralistic society.
For Catholics, these cases highlight the ongoing challenge of upholding religious freedom while respecting the rights of all families. Texas remains one of the most religiously affiliated states in the country, with 42 percent identifying as Protestant and 22 percent as Catholic, according to Pew Research Center data cited by the Washington Post. Even so, the courts continue to scrutinize how, and whether, faith-based expressions can be incorporated into public education.
As legal battles continue, the conversation within the Catholic community remains focused on how to honor the moral heritage of the Ten Commandments while ensuring that evangelization never comes through coercion but through freedom, witness, and charity.
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