Last month marked the beginning of the 89th Texas Legislative session. This biennial meeting of the Texas legislature has been of stressed importance by advocates because of the mass numbers of ideological bills filed. These bills cover a wide range of topics, most notably on education, immigration, LGBTQ+ issues, reproductive healthcare and criminal justice. While executive orders and bills created by the federal government are important, individual states reserve some rights to whether or not to enforce certain laws enacted by the federal government. However, bills signed into law by the Texas Legislature directly affect Texans. For many vulnerable Texans, the Legislative session can be a vastly frightening and anxiety-inducing span of 140 days.
Reader, I recommend that you deeply reflect on some issues that impact you or that you care about. I care about immigration, accessible reproductive care, LGBTQ+ issues, and criminal justice reform. As a policy researcher and public advocate, I can comfortably say that identifying the issues that are important to you and narrowing down based on that eliminates a lot of anxiety around the legislative process, and provides an easy pathway for those interested in the legislative process to participate by joining on-campus organizations, like the Social Work Student Association (SWSA), Texas Rising or Feminist Leadership In Practice (FLIP), dropping a card, advocating in the community, participating in advocacy days with local organizations or giving testimony at public hearings.
Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor of Texas, published the state’s legislative priorities for the 89th session. This includes creating educational savings accounts, or vouchers, to prioritize private schools over public schools (Senate Bill 2), and placing the Ten Commandments in Public School classrooms (Senate Bill 10), in addition to 37 other priority bills proposed. These bills, which are widely backed by Republican lawmakers, threaten our educational system as we know it and push for a transition into a nonsecular public school education. If passed into law, these actions against secular education will have a lasting impact on everyone in the State of Texas.
In addition to the impact of how a transition into a nonsecular educational system will affect students, it will also easily leave the State vulnerable to litigation. SB2 and SB10 both violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution which prevents the U.S. government from establishing or endorsing a religion. As suggested in SB10, putting the Ten Commandments into our public school classrooms directly endorses Christianity and prioritizes it over other religions. This Senate Bill violates the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause that is intended to prevent the government from favoring one religion over another, yet SB10 does exactly that. Yet, if a similar bill was proposed, like installing the Five Pillars of Islam in every public school classroom, conservatives in the State of Texas would outrage with claims of “indoctrination” of the young children. Thinking about the bill in this context exposes the real motive behind its proposal: not religious freedom, but instead favoritism for Christianity.
Like with a lot of the bills filed in this legislative session, they are not filed in good faith or with the people’s best interests in mind. Many of these bills are written and filed with a lens of prejudice and hatred for certain groups.
Reader, if you have any residual feelings of anxiety or frustration regarding the current state of our country, consider turning that frustration and anxiety into righteous anger and join the fight to make the State of Texas a better place.
