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A North Carolina school district has decided to abandon a mandatory rule requiring all schools to display the Ten Commandments.
The Iredell-Statesville School Board has decided against including the Commandments in a “Founding Documents” presentation. The documents would have been displayed in school foyers and libraries.
A concerned parent raised issues and reached out to a Wisconsin-based atheist group to complain.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation said the Ten Commandments display would have violated the First Amendment.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation’s appeal to the Iredell-Statesville School Board to abandon a compulsory districtwide Ten Commandments display proposal appears to have played a key role in the board voting down the idea yesterday.
However, board member Brian Sloan said the proposed displays were well within the letter of the law.
“It would be a flagrant violation of the Establishment Clause for the Board to require all of its schools to display the Ten Commandments,” FFRF Staff Attorney Chris Line wrote in a letter to the school board via email. “The Supreme Court has ruled on Ten Commandments displays in public schools, finding that they violate the Establishment Clause.”
On Monday the school board voted against the proposal
“Based on legal guidance that we got tonight, it pretty much said that the Supreme Court said that you can’t do it,” board member Doug Knight said. “I’m pretty sure if this passed, either this month or next month…we’ve already gotten emails…I just got an email earlier from a national organization saying we’d probably hear from them.”
Knight said any resulting legal battles could cost “hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
“I don’t want to lose that money that we can use for our nurses, for our counselors, for our teachers we have…for teacher’s aids we have that really make a difference,” he said. “Our job isn’t to make news or get on national media, it’s to do what’s best for the kids.”
Needless to say, the out-of-town atheists are gushing with glee that the school board surrendered.
“The First Commandment is reason enough to reject this scheme, since a public school board has no business dictating to other peoples’ children how many gods to worship, which gods to worship or whether to worship any gods at all,” said chief atheist Annie Laurie Gaylor. “We’re pleased that the school board officials are instead upholding the First Amendment.”
It seems to me that the problem with America is that schools are not teaching kids to honor their parents or obey the letter of the law. Thou shall not act like street thugs.
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