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Cornyn Statement On Ten Commandments Case At Supreme Court
Government should never be hostile to expressions of faith and history, Cornyn saysWASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a member of the Judiciary Committee, made the following statement Wednesday regarding a Supreme Court case involving a public display of the Ten Commandments on the state capitol grounds in Texas, Van Orden v. Perry. Cornyn’s successor as Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, made opening arguments in the case."This is an important case that will consider the people’s right to display our nation’s most revered documents in public squares across America. But even having the case is an unfortunate result of an even broader, more systemic problem: the unjustifiable hostility to religious expression in public squares across America."There’s bipartisan agreement on the constitutionality of other important parts of our national heritage such as the Pledge of Allegiance, and the same bipartisan agreement should be extended here. Government should never be hostile to expressions of faith and history, such as the Ten Commandments."Cornyn introduced legislation on Tuesday to strengthen the Equal Access Act, a law that prohibits public secondary schools that receive federal funds from discriminating against groups on the basis of political or religious belief. Sen. Cornyn’s bill will expand the scope of the Equal Access Act to elementary schools.The legislation is a follow-up to a hearing Sen. Cornyn chaired last year as head of the Constitution subcommittee to examine hostility toward religious expression in the public square. Cornyn held the hearing to focus on examples of hostility toward private expressions of faith in the public square, as well as discrimination against religious expression in government speech. The hearing also examined the views of the Founders regarding the free exercise of religion and the inconsistent jurisprudence in the area of religious expression.