Bill would let schools hang Ten Commandments in Ohio classrooms

A bill moving through the Ohio General Assembly would require history and social studies teachers in grades 4-12 statewide to display several historic documents on their walls, including the Ten Commandments.

Under Senate Bill 34, school boards in districts receiving state funds would need to select four documents from a list compiled by lawmakers. The Ten Commandments are among the documents on the list.

Most politicians, especially Democrats, criticized the bill primarily because it contains the Ten Commandments, according to the Statehouse News Bureau.

School districts could take donated funds or materials to fulfill the mandate, and schools could “erect a monument inscribed with one or more of the documents.”

Republican lawmakers who support the bill previously said districts maintain a choice in the matter. They also argued that the foundational religious doctrine for Judaism and Christianity has additional historical significance.

“The actual Ten Commandments are not found in our Constitution, but the principles of many of our founders came from a biblical understanding that all of our rights come from God,” State Sen. Andrew Brenner, R-Delaware, said on Nov. 19. “A lot of these are coming from a biblical basis, and that is what our society and our country and our state is based on.”

On the other hand, the politicians who opposed the bill said it would violate the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

“James Madison believed that even neutral funding or symbolic gestures, like asking for religious proclamations, were potentially dangerous entanglements of government and religion,” State Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio, D-Lakewood, said on Nov. 19.

According to the news source, only one Republican, State Sen. Nathan Manning, R-North Ridgeville, joined the minority caucus in voting against the bill.

The bill is now headed to the House for further consideration, which won’t meet until next year.

Ohio lawmakers have previously tried to put the Ten Commandments in classrooms, according to several reports from the Ohio Capitol Journal.

Lawmakers from other states have been trying to do the same thing, but have been unsuccessful so far. The governors of Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas faced lawsuits after signing similar mandates.

State Sen. Terry Johnson, R-McDermott, the bill’s sponsor, previously said that his bill would “expose students to documents that have ‘served as the backbone of our legal and moral traditions as a people.’”

“This legislation intends to reintroduce disciplined historic principles — those same principles upon which our Founding Fathers drew inspiration and put to writing — back to the classroom,” he said.