North Dakota lawmakers voted down a bill yesterday that would have required the Ten Commandments to be displayed in all public school cafeterias. The House Bill 1145 failed 53-38 after heated debate. While supporters claimed the displays would address moral decline in schools, opponents argued it was unconstitutional and exclusionary to non-Christian students, citing the intended separation of church and state. Representative Hoverson said that the 700% increase in school shootings is a sign of said moral decline and underscored the need for the Ten Commandments in classrooms, citing the “guiding role” the Ten Commandments had on our founding fathers’ work for this nation. However, Representative Davis said for indigenous people like herself, it would reopen old wounds relating to government-imposed religion: “Our children were once taken from their families, forced into boarding schools and made to abandon our languages, our traditions and our spiritual beliefs. Many were subjected to the very doctrine this bill seeks to impose in public institutions. These wounds are not ancient history … For Native students and families who continue to practice our traditional ways, for Jewish, Muslim and others (students), this bill sends a clear message: You are secondary, and the government endorses one particular religious tradition above all others.” The bill’s defeat follows a similar law in Louisiana that was blocked by a federal judge in November, and echoes North Dakota’s own 1979 legal battle when such displays were ruled unconstitutional in Grand Forks.
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