Ten Commandments belong in Texas schools and the Supreme Court can protect them
The Fifth Circuit said a poster is not a church. The Supreme Court now decides if Texas kids may still see the text that taught thou shalt not kill.
Summary
- A Fox News opinion piece says the Supreme Court has been asked to review a Fifth Circuit decision that posting the Ten Commandments in Texas public schools is constitutional and consistent with the nation's historical understanding of religion in public life.
- The Texas law requires a poster, not prayer, recitation, or any affirmation. The Fifth Circuit, applying Kennedy v. Bremerton after the end of the Lemon test, said mere presence of religious language is not ipso facto coercion.
- The Commandments' prohibitions on murder, theft, and perjury underpin Western legal tradition. Critics call a wall display indoctrination. The piece argues exposure is not establishment, any more than 'In God We Trust' or the Declaration's Creator.
- Texas's board has also approved required reading that includes Bible passages for about 5 million students. The coming certiorari decision will signal whether historical-practice analysis still governs school walls.
Commentary
A Texas father still drops a kid at a brick school and expects the wall to remember thou shalt not steal. He does not get a European lecture if a poster names the same rules the criminal code already uses. He gets a hallway that either tells the truth about the law's grandparents or pretends the law hatched from nowhere.
That is the gap. A poster. No prayer. No penalty for looking away. The honest mom already taught the list at supper. A court fight now treats that list like contraband.
Ask every parent in that pickup line: if a child may read King in class but may not see the Commandments on the wall, who emptied the heritage?
Comments
Thou shalt not kill is not a sect. It is the first sentence of a decent street.
I swore on a book. A wall poster without a forced prayer is history, not a parish.
Kennedy killed Lemon. The Fifth Circuit applied the history test. Cert should hold that line.
A nation that hides its moral source documents will not keep the statutes those documents built.
Watch the 'coercion' claim. No recitation, no penalty, no attendance rule. That is a poster.
I teach my kids not to steal after a shift. The school can stand the same sentence on a wall.
Five million kids already live under that code at home. A hallway should not act allergic to it.
A civilization that blushes at its commandments will not stay armed for long. Keep the text.
Fox printed the Fifth Circuit, Kennedy, no-prayer poster, and the 5 million reading list. Argue those nouns.
Grant review. Affirm the circuit. A wall may remember the rules without founding a church.
