Montana Senate Votes Down Bill to Require Ten Commandments in Public School Classrooms

By Keila Szpaller for the Daily Montanan

The Ten Commandments (Photo by Darrell Ehrlick of the Daily Montanan).

The Montana Senate voted down a bill Saturday to require public schools to post the Ten Commandments in every classroom, albeit with an emotional debate about the need for moral standards in the country and the atrocities inflicted in the name of religion.

Senator Jason Ellsworth, R-Hamilton, said he’s a Christian who morally supports the Ten Commandments, but he prayed about the bill, and he couldn’t support it.

Ellsworth said senators swear an oath to defend the Constitution, which prohibits the establishment of a religion.

“So if we put the Ten Commandments up, which are Christian commandments, then we’re actually violating the plain language of our Constitution in our First Amendment,” Ellsworth said.

The Senate voted 24-26 against the bill after a lengthy debate, which followed an earlier floor debate and a committee hearing that brought supporters with national profiles to testify in its favor.

Senator Bob Phalen, R-Lindsay, sponsored Senate Bill 114, modeled after a similar bill in Louisiana that’s being litigated, and proposed with the idea the U.S. Supreme Court may be evolving to be more friendly to government accommodation of religion.

In an earlier debate, Senator Susan Webber, D-Browning, proposed an unsuccessful amendment to exempt school districts on or near Native American reservations with more than one Indian student enrolled.

Webber said the federal government and Catholic church subjected Native children to mental and physical abuse, and they should not experience more abuse in the name of Christianity.

“Not on my watch will I allow the Indian children of Montana to suffer more indignities,” said Webber, member of the Blackfeet Nation.

The bill was heard on the Senate floor twice after it initially failed on a tied vote but went back to committee for an amendment, which said districts were authorized to spend money on the postings but not required to do so if donations, for instance, could be used.

During the first debate, Webber also told the Senate she survived an Indian boarding school, and she saw firsthand the atrocities that took place in the name of Christianity. She said she would not condone requiring Indian students be subjected to the religious symbol.

“And I do respect your faith. I do. And I respect every person of faith. And I expect you to respect mine as well,” Webber said.

Saturday, Webber also said she believes the bill would violate the American Indian Religious Freedom Act.

In a response to Ellsworth and in support of the bill, Majority Leader Tom McGillvray, R-Billings, said the Constitution protects the “free exercise” of religion, too. He pointed to times he believed the Ten Commandments would be relevant and current laws that he said flowed from them — like don’t steal and eminent domain.

McGillvray said the command to “not bear false witness” would be good to post in every committee room at the Capitol, and he said some children might live better lives and even avoid prison if they had a reminder to honor their father and their mother.

“How many families would be better off if these laws were taken seriously in our world today?” said McGillvray, although he said he understood the constitutional debate.

And Senate President Matt Regier, R-Kalispell, argued that posting the Ten Commandments was no more promoting religion than having “In God We Trust” on money or even in saying the Pledge of Allegiance, as the Senate does.

“Why would we not mention God in our schools?” Regier said.

In Louisiana, the law is in effect in all but the five districts that are involved in a lawsuit, heard last month at the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, according to the Louisiana Illuminator. There, the solicitor general argued the Ten Commandments have historical significance and cited a 5th Circuit ruling from 2007 that allowed a memorial display outside a Texas courthouse that included a Bible.

In Montana, eight Republicans joined all Democrats to turn down the bill and then indefinitely postponed it. In opposing it, Senator Derek Harvey, D-Butte, said schools need to be safe spaces for children, and he argued some might not want reminders of their mothers and fathers.

“I have to respond to the kid that has been assaulted by thy mother or thy father,” said Harvey, a first responder.

Senator Mary Ann Dunwell, D-Helena, had earlier proposed an unsuccessful amendment to also post Unitarian principles in classrooms — “fair is fair” — and said principles from Judaism, Islam, and other faiths would be relevant as well.

Saturday, though, Dunwell offered a different reason to vote against the bill. Dunwell said the Montana Constitution states that local trustees control local school districts, and she believes the mandate in the bill runs contrary to the constitution.

“It flies in the face of it, and it’s legislative overreach into the local control of our schools that I think we all hold dear,” Dunwell said.

Senator Christopher Pope, D-Bozeman, said he agreed that if people adhered to the Ten Commandments, it would improve things, and he encouraged people to personally start applying them and to respect a diversity of opinion and faith.

But he said he would, for the rest of his life, oppose the state directing what religion sits inside public schools or state buildings or budgets.

“Let’s gently not go down this path,” Pope said. “Freedom is our right. But it becomes something else when it’s state mandated.”