Texas | A judge blocks a law imposing that the 10 commandments appear in schools

(Washington) An American federal judge blocked a Texas law on Wednesday demanding that public schools display the 10 commandments in each classroom.

Judge Fred Biery issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting the implementation of the law, which was to enter into force on 1^er September and was challenged by families of students of various denominations.

This law is unconstitutional, “takes sides inadmissibly on theological issues and officially promotes Christian denominations to the detriment of others,” he wrote in his 55-page judgment.

The display of the 10 commandments in classrooms is “likely to send a message of exclusion and spiritually weighing” to the children at the origin of the complaint, by giving them the feeling of being “foreigners who do not belong to their own school community”, he argues.

Rabbine Mara Nathan, one of the complainants in this case, praised the judgment.

“Children ‘religious beliefs should be instilled by parents and communities of faith, not by political figures and public schools,” she said in a statement.

Rachel Laser, president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, an association dedicated to the defense of secularism, also approved the decision.

She sends a “strong and resounding message through the country that the government respects the religious freedom of each student in our public schools,” she said.

Another federal judge had blocked in November a similar law in Louisiana, another conservative state in the southern United States.

He had deemed it contrary to the first amendment of the American Constitution, which prohibits the establishment of a national religion and prohibited to promote one religion on another.

Religious freedom and the separation of Church and State are founding principles in the United States.

In 1980, the United States Supreme Court had already judged that a law providing for the display of 10 commandments in Kentucky public schools was unconstitutional.

The highest official of education in Oklahoma ordered in June 2024 to public schools in this state in the south of the United States to teach the Bible, a controversial decision which is also contested in court.