The Freedom From Religion Foundation is calling on the school board in Bakersfield, Calif., to reject a proposal to display the Ten Commandments in every school classroom.
A concerned Kern County parent alerted FFRF that on Dec. 17, the Kern County Board of Education will be considering the proposal. The board will hear two presentations, one about the so-called “historical basis” for displaying the Ten Commandments and another about the so-called legal grounds for doing so.
There is no historical basis for displaying the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms, and doing so violates both the U.S. and California Constitutions, FFRF has informed the board. The Ten Commandments are neither a historical document foundational to American law nor a universal moral code shared by all citizens.
FFRF legal counsel Chris Line reminds the Board the U.S. Supreme Court has unequivocally ruled that posting the Ten Commandments in public schools is unconstitutional. In Stone v. Graham (1980), the Supreme Court definitively said, “The pre-eminent purpose for posting the Ten Commandments on schoolroom walls is plainly religious in nature. . . . The Commandments do not confine themselves to arguably secular matters . . . rather, the first part of the Commandments concerns the religious duties of believers.”
The Ten Commandments are undeniably a religious text, and efforts to disguise their posting as nonreligious are transparent and disingenuous. As the Supreme Court said in McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky:
They proclaim the existence of a monotheistic god (no other gods). They regulate details of religious obligation (no graven images, no Sabbath breaking, no vain oath swearing). And they unmistakably rest even the universally accepted prohibitions (as against murder, theft, and the like) on the sanction of the divinity proclaimed at the beginning of the text.
Contrary to the Christian nationalist myth, American law is not in any sense based on the Ten Commandments. The first four commandments address purely religious obligations — such as worshiping one God and prohibiting idolatry — that are wholly incompatible with the principles of religious freedom enshrined in the First Amendment. The remaining commandments, which deal with moral conduct, overlap only coincidentally with secular laws prohibiting actions like theft and murder. And it is hard to reckon why a public school thinks it has to post prohibitions against committing adultery in every classroom.
FFRF has successfully challenged the Ten Commandments in public schools. FFRF and several families filed successful federal lawsuits against two school districts in Pennsylvania, New Kensington-Arnold School District and Connellsville Area School District, for refusing to remove unconstitutional Ten Commandments displays. In both of these cases, the school districts were required to remove the displays and pay FFRF’s attorneys’ fees. FFRF is also involved in a lawsuit over a law requiring all public elementary and secondary schools to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom in Louisiana. The law is currently enjoined, since a judge determined that it violates the First Amendment and longstanding Supreme Court precedent.
FFRF warns that if the Board decides to move forward with violating the rights of its students, it could subject the school district to unnecessary liability and potential financial strain. When FFRF secured a court order in its Chino Valley (Calif.) case regarding school board prayers, the court ordered the district to pay more than $200,000 in the plaintiffs’ attorney fees and costs. After appeal, the court ordered the district to pay an additional $75,000 for plaintiffs’ attorney fees and costs associated with the appeal for a total of more than a quarter million dollars.
In addition to serious legal issues, promoting the Ten Commandments in our public schools undermines the inclusive and pluralistic values that public education should represent. Kern County is home to a richly diverse population, including people of various religious traditions — Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist — and many who identify as atheists, agnostics, or unaffiliated.
“The role of public schools is to educate, not indoctrinate in religion,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “The First Commandment alone shows why it does not belong in public schools or government property. The school board has no business telling a captive audience of schoolchildren which gods to worship, how many gods to worship or whether to worship any gods at all! This unconstitutional proposal must be voted down.”
FFRF urges the Kern County Board of Education to focus its efforts on secular education and initiatives that benefit all students equally—improving academic achievement, fostering inclusivity and respecting the constitutional rights of every student.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with over 40,000 members and several chapters across the country, including more than 5,100 members and two chapters in California. FFRF’s purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between church and state, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
