Blog from the Capital

The Houston School District went looking for answers from the Texas Attorney General regarding the new law designed to "clarify" students' rights to free religious expression. What the legislation did instead, naturally, was to muddy the waters, a bit of an exercise, as I've argued before, in wishful thinking. So, does this new law conflict with older injunctions prohibiting schools from, say, having prayer at student events? AG Greg Abbott says don't ask me.

The district, Abbott wrote in his opinion, would have to ask the federal court for answers.

"It is for that court to determine whether the (Schoolchildren's Religious Liberties Act) poses any conflict with the court's order," he wrote in a letter to state Education Commissioner Robert Scott, who sought an opinion on behalf of the Houston Independent School District. "Thus, we do not address your questions at this time."

One of the stated rationales for this law was the idea that somehow it would remove religious liberty conflicts from the arena of courts, to pre-settle disputes in the statute. That is, of course, impossible, as this one example demonstrates.