The lawsuit was filed in San Antonio, after the passage of a state law requiring Protestant version of the Ten Commandments to be displayed in all classrooms.
SAN ANTONIO — Sixteen Texas families filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday against several school districts across the state to block a new law that would require the Ten Commandments be displayed in all public school classrooms.
The families come from various religious and nonreligious backgrounds, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas. Plano ISD is one of the 11 school districts listed as a defendant in the suit. WFAA is reaching out to Plano ISD officials for comment.
This comes after a similar lawsuit has been filed against the Texas Education Agency by state faith leaders over the bill.
Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, the complaint argues that the proposed law, Senate Bill 10, violates the First Amendment’s protections for right to free religious exercise and the separation of church and state.
SB 10 requires that the Protestant version of the Ten Commandments be displayed in every classroom.
“As a rabbi and public school parent, I am deeply concerned that SB 10 will impose another faith’s scripture on students for nearly every hour of the school day,” said plaintiff Rabbi Mara Nathan in a statement. “While our Jewish faith treats the Ten Commandments as sacred, the version mandated under this law does not match the text followed by our family, and the school displays will conflict with the religious beliefs and values we seek to instill in our child.”
Pastor Griff Martin, another of the plaintiffs, called posting the Ten Commandments in public schools un-American and un-Baptist.
“SB 10 undermines the separation of church and state as a bedrock principle of my family’s Baptist heritage,” Martin said in a statement. “Baptists have long held that the government has no role in religion — so that our faith may remain free and authentic. My children’s faith should be shaped by family and our religious community, not by a Christian nationalist movement that confuses God with power.”
The lawsuit cites a number of previous court rulings, including Stone v. Graham, where the Supreme Court struck down a law in Kentucky that mandated displays of the Ten Commandments in classrooms, arguing it would unconstitutionally “induce school children to read, meditate upon, perhaps to venerate and obey, the Commandments.”
“Under this precedent, permanently posting the Ten Commandments in every Texas public-school classroom—rendering them unavoidable—is plainly unconstitutional,” the suit argues. “The displays will pressure students, including the minor-child Plaintiffs, into religious observance, veneration, and adoption of the state’s favored religious scripture.”
The suit further argues that the state’s main interest in the displays is to impose religious beliefs onto the children, disregarding objections from families and faith leaders across the religious spectrum. It then quotes Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who said that because of SB 10, students “in every classroom in Texas, they are going to see the Ten Commandments, and they are going to know about God.”
There is no longstanding history in the U.S. of displaying the Ten Commandments in classrooms, the suit argues, and none of the nation’s founding documents, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, were based on the Ten Commandments.
Adriana Piñon, the legal director of the ACLU of Texas, said politicians don’t get to dictate how or whether students practice religion.
“We’re bringing this lawsuit to ensure that all students, regardless of their faith or nonreligious beliefs, feel accepted and free to be themselves in Texas public schools,” Piñon said in a statement.
The full lawsuit can be read here.