Three parents sued on Thursday to force Texas to block and remove posters with the Ten Commandments from public school classrooms, arguing that state laws on religious freedom and parental rights conflict with the new state-mandated displays.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit, filed in state court in Harris County, seeks a court order to remove the displays and prohibit their posting before students return. The school year begins in early- to mid-August for many Texas districts.<\/p>\n
The posters have already survived legal challenges in federal court. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit said in April that the state law requiring their display, passed last year, did not violate the U.S. Constitution<\/a>. The ruling also paved the way for Louisiana to require similar displays.<\/p>\n The suit filed on Thursday is trying a different approach.<\/p>\n Instead of making an argument about the separation of church and state, the plaintiffs are relying on a Texas law, passed in 1999 and signed by Gov. George W. Bush, that protects religious practice.<\/p>\n The law, known as the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act, has been invoked in many previous Texas cases, often by religious groups or people arguing that some action by the state government interferes with their religious practice.<\/p>\n Posting the commandments in classrooms \u201csubstantially interferes with plaintiffs\u2019 free exercise of religion, religious development, and rights to raise their children free of State-sponsored religion,\u201d the suit says.<\/p>\n The suit also invokes a state constitutional amendment, passed by the Republican-dominated legislature and adopted by voters last year, that guarantees parents the right to direct their children\u2019s upbringing.<\/p>\n \u201cI never intended to talk to my children this young about the Ten Commandments,\u201d said one of the plaintiffs, Emily Roth, whose children, 4 and 6, attend the Spring Branch Independent School District and whose household is nonreligious. \u201cIt\u2019s not the set of moral absolutes that our family is run on.\u201d<\/p>\n The state has defended the displays as elemental to instruction about U.S. history, rather than religion.<\/p>\n