A Texas school board voted to opt out of a policy that would create an established time for prayer, saying there are already laws that protect religious freedom.
“The policy is very explicit on how it has to look, and it would actually put very limiting factors around the times a student could pray, could read scripture,” Denton ISD lawyer Deron Robinson said of the law, as per KERA News, adding, “It would essentially deprive students of a lot of the rights they currently have, to the point where, if I’m being real honest, when you put rules on something, there’s an assumption that you’re going to enforce those rules. I think if you had a student who were to pray outside of the designated time to pray, and you were to take issue with it and try to stop them, I don’t think that would hold up to a constitutional challenge.”
The September law, Senate Bill 11, allows the “board of trustees of a school district or the governing body of an open-enrollment charter school that is not operated by or affiliated with a religious organization” to “adopt a policy requiring every campus of the district or school to provide students and employees with an opportunity to participate in a period of prayer and reading of the Bible or other religious text on each school day.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has also urged school districts to implement posters of the Ten Commandments in compliance with SB 10. Lawsuits have been filed against school districts refusing to display the Ten Commandments. “By refusing to follow the law, Galveston ISD chose to both blatantly ignore the Legislature and also ignore the legal and moral heritage of our nation,” Paxton explained.
