NC community forbids Ten Commandments, Constitution displays in schools

A school district in North Carolina has decided against allowing the display of the Ten Commandments and other “founding documents” in its schools, citing the possibility of legal repercussions.

Members of the Iredell-Statesville school board rejected an October 15th proposal to place posters throughout the district’s schools displaying the Ten Commandments, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, with one board member expressing his concern over the legality of such displays and the fear that they may open the district to lawsuits.

“I took an oath to uphold the constitution of the state of North Carolina,” board member Doug Knight said. “This is a legal question to me, not a question of religion…. As presented in its current form, I don’t think it would correlate with state law.”

Knight added: “I don’t want to pay to take something all the way to the Supreme Court … that’s a lot of legal fees.”

School board vice chairman Charles Kelly cited previous court cases in his recommendation to reject the proposal. “The way it is right now, we’re wasting time and we’re wasting money,” he said. “I believe in the Ten Commandments. Everybody in this room lives by the Ten Commandments. They’re a part of our background, a part of our history, they’re part of our country. But some group of idiots decided we couldn’t use them, or we couldn’t display them in the school. That’s the law right now.”

Board member Brian Sloan, who presented the proposal for the displays to his fellow board members, said he was willing to alter the posters to make the Ten Commandments less prominent and the U.S. Constitution clearer, but was rebuffed by other board members. “I know this is a hot topic,” he said. “I don’t think that I will ever make everybody happy.”

Conservative commentator Todd Starnes reported that the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), a Wisconsin based atheist group, warned the Iredell-Statesville school district against the proposed Ten Commandment displays, claiming they would violate the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, which supposedly mandates a strict separation of church and state activity.

“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 attorney Chris Line wrote the school board in an email. “The Supreme Court has ruled on Ten Commandments displays in public schools, finding that they violate the Establishment Clause.”

While Sloan insisted that his proposed displays were well within legal requirements, the threat of a lawsuit from secular groups like the FFRF was enough to prompt the school board to reject the displays.

“Based on legal guidance that we got … the Supreme Court said that you can’t do it,” Starnes quoted Knight as saying. “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 added that legal battles could cost the district “hundreds of thousands of dollars.”