Thou Shalt Not Overturn Supreme Court Precedent

In an outrageous decision issued yesterday, a federal court has upheld a Texas law requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms. The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that the displays would not have counted as an establishment of religion in 1791, when the First Amendment was ratified.

This is terrible originalism. The establishment clause of the First Amendment was written and intended to prohibit two things: religious coercion and government expenditure to support religion. The Texas law coerces school children to be in classrooms where the explicitly religious messages of the Ten Commandments are held up as models. And while posting the Ten Commandments signs may not be expensive, it does cost something — and properly understood, the First Amendment prohibits any expenditure for religious purposes.