AUSTIN, Texas – Texas would require all public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments under a Republican proposal that cleared a major vote Saturday and would make the state the nation's largest to impose such a mandate.
If passed as expected, the measure is likely to draw a legal challenge from critics who consider it a constitutional violation of the separation of church and state.
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The Republican-controlled House gave its preliminary approval with a final vote expected in the next few days. That would send the bill to the desk of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who has indicated he will sign it into law.
“The focus of this bill is to look at what is historically important to our nation educationally and judicially,” said Republican state representative Candy Noble, a co-sponsor of the bill.
Two other states, Louisiana and Arkansas, have similar laws, but Louisiana's is on hold after a federal judge found that it was “ unconstitutional on its face.”
Those measures are among efforts, mainly in conservative-led states, to insert religion into public schools. The vote in Texas came after the U.S. Supreme Court effectively ended a publicly funded Catholic charter school in Oklahoma on Thursday with a 4-4 tie following a string of high court decisions in recent years that have allowed public funds to flow to religious entities.
Texas lawmakers also have passed and sent to Abbott a measure that allows school districts to provide students and staff a daily voluntary period of prayer or time to read a religious text during school hours. Abbott is expected to sign it.
“We should be encouraging our students to read and study their Bible every day,” Republican state Rep. Brent Money said. “Our kids in our public schools need prayer, need Bible reading, more now than they ever have.”
Supporters of requiring the Ten Commandments in classrooms say they are part of the foundation of the United States' judicial and educational systems and should be displayed.
But critics, including some Christian and other faith leaders, say the Ten Commandments and prayer measures would infringe on the religious freedom of others.
The Ten Commandments bill requires public schools to post in classrooms a 16-by-20-inch (41-by-51-centimeter) poster or framed copy of a specific English version of the commandments, even though translations and interpretations vary across denominations, faiths and languages and may differ in homes and houses of worship.
Democratic lawmakers made several failed attempts Saturday to amend the bill to require schools display other religious texts or provide multiple translations of the commandments.
A letter signed this year by dozens of Christian and Jewish faith leaders opposing the bill noted that Texas has thousands of students of other faiths who might have no connection to the Ten Commandments. Texas has nearly 6 million students in about 9,100 public schools.
In 2005, Abbott, who was state attorney general at the time, successfully argued before the Supreme Court that Texas could keep a Ten Commandments monument on the grounds of its Capitol.
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Lathan is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.