SC House approves measure requiring Ten Commandments in classrooms
(WCIV) — In a vote mostly along party lines, the South Carolina House of Representatives approved a bill Wednesday requiring public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments.
The 84-31 vote came after the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals lifted a block on a nearly identical Louisiana law that a lower court had initially placed on the law in 2024. In the opinion released Friday, the court said it was too early to make a judgment call on the constitutionality of the law, according to reporting from NPR.
In South Carolina, the bill would also require the 11-by-13-inch poster or framed copy of the Ten Commandments be displayed in colleges.
The display will also have a statement that details the history of the Ten Commandments.
“The posting of the Commandments, I think, reiterates and reminds everybody on a daily basis of how we got this entire institution started,” state Rep. Robby Robbins, a Republican from Summerville, said to the South Carolina Daily Gazette. “I don’t see any problem with it.”
Schools will also be able to implement volunteer school chaplains if this bill were to become law.
Additionally, schools can also display the Mayflower Compact, Declaration of Independence and Emancipation Proclamation. However, those wouldn’t be required.
Louisiana’s law, signed in 2024, requiring the Ten Commandments in public schools, was the first of its kind since the Supreme Court struck down a Kentucky law in 1980 that had a similar directive. Arkansas and Texas quickly followed.
All have faced legal challenges to their requirements.
As for South Carolina’s bill, it now heads over to the Senate, where its future remains unclear.
