NC school district rejects Ten Commandments classroom display
A school district in North Carolina has voted down a proposal to put up posters that included the Ten Commandments and the United States Constitution in public schools.
The Iredell-Statesville Schools Board of Education rejected the proposal at a meeting on Monday, with concerns over potential litigation being a factor.
Board member Brian Sloan, who introduced the effort to display the posters, said at the meeting, “I know this is a hot topic," adding: “I don’t think that I will ever make everybody happy.”
Sloan expressed openness to modifying the poster so that the Constitution was clearer and the Ten Commandments less prominent, with the two documents being about equal in legibility.
While Sloan made a motion to vote on the proposal, he did not receive a second. Before a second could be called, member Mike Kubiniec made a motion to postpone the vote on the poster.
If approved, the postponement motion would push the vote on the proposal until next month. If voted down, the overall proposal would not be brought to a vote in the near future.
Kubiniec said there were “a lot of open questions” about the proposal, especially whether the poster would be altered to better showcase the Constitution.
“If we want to present to the board and present to the public a modified version of this proposal, then I think we should have that in front of us to look at," he said.
Board member Doug Knight opposed the poster, telling those at the meeting that he felt it was “a legal question” and “not a question of religion,” believing that the poster “would not correlate with state law.”
Knight cited the 1980 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Stone v. Graham, in which the high court ruled 5-4 that Kentucky couldn't require schools to display the Ten Commandments.
Knight added that he was “pretty sure if this passed, either this month or next month,” that they'd be sued, noting that an unnamed “national organization” had already threatened the board with legal action.
The motion to postpone the vote on the poster until next month was defeated in a vote of 4-3.
In June, Louisiana passed a law requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments in its public schools, with the state being sued by an interfaith group of parents opposed to the law soon after.
In July, Louisiana agreed to not fully implement the law before Nov. 15 as the litigation continues through the courts.
