California —
“FFRF, alongside the ACLU of Southern California, the national ACLU, and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, prevented the Kern County Board of Education from passing a motion that would force county schools to display the Ten Commandments.
The board scheduled a meeting to consider the measure at its meeting in Bakersfield on Nov. 13. The proposal would require the Ten Commandments to be displayed alongside other documents, such as the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights in five of the district’s six alternative education schools. The board was also considering whether to hire the Christian nationalist Liberty Counsel to represent the board.
FFRF and its allies stood up to stop the motion from passing.
“Requiring students of faiths that do not recognize the religious symbolism of the Decalogue to be forced to come into contact either in school lobbies, classrooms or other places in schools with a religious display that is of no religious significance to them and daily observe the Ten Commandments demonstrates a clear preference for those religions that revere the Commandments,” the joint letter states.
Thanks to the combined efforts of the organizations, the motion did not succeed. Thanks to an article posted by the youth-led media outlet Kern Sol Media, news of the failed motion came nearly a month after the FFRF-signed letter. “The Kern County Board of Education decided not to move forward with a proposal that would have required the Ten Commandments to be displayed in classrooms at several county schools,” author Haley Duval wrote.”
