'I will not back down': Right-wing AG demands red state's schools defy court order

Brad Reed
and
Common Dreams
26 August
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in Phoenix on December 21, 2024 (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Monday said that the vast majority of schools in the Lone Star State should still plan on displaying the Ten Commandments in classrooms even after a federal judge ruled against it last week.

In a statement, Paxton said that "schools not enjoined by ongoing litigation must abide" by a state law that requires the display of the Ten Commandments in all public and secondary school classrooms.

"The woke radicals seeking to erase our nation's history will be defeated," he said. "I will not back down from defending the virtues and values that built this country."

Paxton asserted that only nine Texas school districts are affected by the injunction and said that all other districts "must abide by the law once it takes effect on September 1, 2025."

The Texas attorney general's defiant stance on the Ten Commandments earned him a quick rebuke from Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), who accused him of grandstanding instead of doing his job as the state's chief law enforcement official.

"Paxton's job is to uphold the Constitution, which guarantees the separation of church and state—not the Ten Commandments," he wrote on X. "Our public schools should focus on educating Texas students, not stoking culture wars."

The Freedom From Religion Foundation also rebuked Paxton for failing to uphold the Constitution's prohibition of the government establishment of a religion.

"The Constitution, not the Ten Commandments, built this country," the foundation said. "Forcing students to observe one religion’s rules is a blatant violation of the First Amendment regardless of what Ken Paxton claims. Public schools are for education, not religious indoctrination."

Paxton's declaration came less than a week after US District Judge Fred Biery of the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas issued a preliminary injunction against the state law requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed.

In his ruling, Biery argued that the classroom displays "are likely to pressure the [students] into religious observance, meditation on, veneration, and adoption of the state's favored religious scripture, and into suppressing expression of their own religious or nonreligious background and beliefs while at school."

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