Texas Republicans took yet another loss in court on Tuesday, as a federal judge blocked their law requiring the Biblical Ten Commandments to be displayed in school classrooms via a preliminary injunction.
According to CBS News, “In September, a group of Texas families, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), sued to stop public school districts from displaying the Ten Commandments in classrooms, claiming it violates religious freedom and the separation of church and state. The September suit came a month after a federal judge temporarily blocked the law in a separate case involving Plano ISD. That ruling found the law ‘crosses the line from exposure to coercion’ and favors Christianity over other faiths.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a far-right figure close to President Donald Trump who is running for Senate, demanded at the time that schools ignore the court ruling and follow the Texas law anyway.
But in the Tuesday ruling, U.S. District Judge Orlando L. Garcia gave a smackdown to the state, saying that “displaying the Ten Commandments on the wall of a public-school classroom as set forth in S.B. 10 violates the Establishment Clause” of the First Amendment.
The new ruling also instructs fourteen school districts to take down the Ten Commandments displays they already have, including districts for Fort Worth, Arlington, McKinney, Frisco, Northwest, Rockwall, and Mansfield.
This decision comes just hours after Republicans suffered another blow in federal court, with a three-judge panel dominated by conservatives ruling in a split decision to strike down the state’s newly gerrymandered congressional map that seeks to dismantle five districts held by Democrats.
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