The newly-introduced House Bill 1086 is short and sweet. The entire bill reads, “each school corporation shall place a durable poster or framed picture representing the text of the Ten Commandments in each school library and classroom within the school corporation.”

That’s it.

Kudos to Davis, Prescott, Smith H., and Teshka (the bill’s co-authors) for brevity. But not for substance. To answer the question I posed in the title: quite possibly. But should they? No.

The establishment clause exists. You know, if you want to talk about founding values.

This very issue also happens to have settled legal precedent. Stone v. Graham in 1980 clearly ruled that requiring the Ten Commandments be displayed in public school classrooms violated the establishment clause.

But the shifting political winds have emboldened Indiana to follow other states in taking another bite at the apple. Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas already passed similar legislation in recent years. All immediately faced legal challenges. Indiana is certain to as well if House Bill 1086 moves forward.

(For a deep dive into where those legal challenges stand, particularly the Texas case, I found this Texas Tribune article indispensable.)

In the Texas case, a US District Judge blocked the law with what I found to be a deeply cogent explanation. He noted, “There are ways in which students could be taught any relevant history of the Ten Commandments without the state selecting an official version of scripture, approving it in state law, and then displaying it in every classroom on a permanent basis.” The opinion went on to say such a law wasn’t just “exposure,” it was “coercion.”

That’s exactly right.

And I think that’s exactly the point of these kind of laws. They aren’t about spreading the Gospel or instilling basic morals into our youth or somehow reclaiming our founding values.

They are about power and control.

The settled legal precedent from Stone v. Graham? Well, that ruling relied on the earlier decision in Lemon v. Kurtzman. That case produced the “Lemon Test” (thanks very much to Scotus Blog for their insight here if you care for a deeper dive).

In short: it was a framework to decide whether a state law violated the establishment clause. Some 45 years later, the court threw out the Lemon Test in 2022 with their decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (which you might recall making waves as the case where a football coach was suspended for holding full-team prayers on the field after games).

Schools are just one battleground. The public square is another.

Indiana elected leaders now want to display the Ten Commandments at the Statehouse, with Governor Braun and Attorney General Rokita filing an injunction to throw out a ruling from 2000 that prevented the Statehouse grounds from erecting a monument that features the Ten Commandments.

Faith, no matter someone’s particular background, can be a potent force for good. It can also be a very potent force for division, exclusivity, and coercion. I don’t think it’s an accident that so many politicians today seek to use it for the latter. That doesn’t make it any less of a shame, though.

Recall the famous Maslow saying. “It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.”

That so many religious people in positions of power think the only tool they have at their disposal is a hammer holds a special kind of irony. Then again, I have yet to see a bill propose hanging the text of the Sermon on the Mount in every public school classroom.