Civil rights groups have petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to block a Texas law requiring the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom, setting up a major First Amendment fight the high court's conservative majority may be eager to take.
The ACLU, representing more than two dozen Texas families, filed the petition after the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the law in a narrow 9-8 ruling in April. That decision reversed lower court orders that had blocked the mandate, known as Senate Bill 10, and overturned a 1980 Supreme Court precedent that struck down a nearly identical Kentucky statute. Now the families want the justices to weigh in directly, and the ACLU says it expects to win, just as it did forty-six years ago.
Texas passed SB 10 just over a year ago. The law requires every public school classroom in the state to post a durable poster or framed copy of the Ten Commandments, with specific requirements for size and typeface. Challengers say the mandate forces a single religious text on children who may hold different beliefs or none at all, and that it does so for nearly every hour of every school day, for up to thirteen years of a student's education.
The appeals court's April decision hinged on a legal shift the Supreme Court itself set in motion. In 2022, the high court abandoned a longstanding test for Establishment Clause cases, the so-called "Lemon test," named after a 1971 ruling, in its decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, a case involving a football coach's right to pray on the field. The Fifth Circuit majority concluded that once the Lemon test was gone, the 1980 ruling in Stone v. Graham, which had barred Kentucky's Ten Commandments displays, no longer held up.
Fox News reported that the Fifth Circuit majority wrote bluntly in its opinion:
"[W]ith Lemon extracted, there is nothing left of Stone."
The court went further, arguing that the Texas law bears no resemblance to a government-imposed religion. It does not dictate what churches, synagogues, or mosques must believe, the majority wrote. It does not punish anyone who rejects the Commandments. And no child is required to recite, affirm, or believe them.
But the vote was close. Eight judges dissented, and the ACLU and its allied plaintiffs called the ruling a violation of "fundamental First Amendment principles and binding U.S. Supreme Court authority." That tight margin, and the direct collision with Stone v. Graham, gives the Supreme Court a clear reason to take the case if it chooses.
The families behind the petition come from a range of religious backgrounds. Their argument is not simply that the Ten Commandments are religious, few would dispute that, but that the state has no business choosing which scripture public school students must see every day.
Rebekah and Ted Lowe, an interfaith couple among the plaintiffs, put it in terms that should resonate with any parent skeptical of government overreach into family life. The Washington Examiner reported their statement:
"Texas politicians shouldn't have a seat at the table in deciding how our children receive their religious education. This law puts one version of religious beliefs above all others in our public schools."
Rabbi Joshua Fixler, another plaintiff, argued that the displays single out children whose families practice different faiths or traditions:
"These displays put children in the position of having to defend themselves and their families' religious beliefs against a government mandate that makes them feel different and separate from their classmates."
ACLU of Texas attorney Chole Kempf framed the challenge as a defense of the boundary between government and religious instruction, as FOX 7 Austin reported:
"Our nation's bedrock principle of separating church and state means that families and faith communities, not politicians, get to decide what role religion plays in children's lives. Texas students deserve public schools that welcome them for who they are, respect their religious or nonreligious backgrounds, and give them the high-quality education they need to build their futures."
Kempf also warned that the posters put students "at risk of bullying, stigmatization, and religious coercion", a claim stated as a concern, not a documented outcome.
This is not just a Texas fight. Similar Ten Commandments display laws have been passed in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Alabama, AP News reported. The Fifth Circuit's April ruling also approved Louisiana's version of the law. A Supreme Court decision either way would ripple across every state that has enacted or is considering such mandates.
ACLU attorney Heather Weaver told AP that the organization wants the justices to settle the question nationally. "We would like for the Supreme Court to make clear that singling out Scripture for display in public schools is a violation of the First Amendment," Weaver said. She added: "This is an issue of nationwide importance because a number of states have been considering these laws in recent years."
The Supreme Court's current 6-3 conservative majority has already shown a willingness to revisit long-settled questions involving religion and public life. Its 2022 Kennedy decision did not merely resolve one coach's prayer dispute, it dismantled the analytical framework lower courts had used for half a century. The Fifth Circuit's Ten Commandments ruling is a direct downstream consequence of that shift.
Whether the justices view that consequence as the correct application of their own precedent, or as an overcorrection by a lower court, will determine how far states can go in placing religious texts inside public schools. The court has not yet announced whether it will hear the case.
The Supreme Court's docket already includes cases testing the boundaries of religious liberty, from workplace protections to public expression. A decision to take the Texas case would add the most prominent Establishment Clause dispute in a generation.
Cecillia Wang, the ACLU's national legal director, drew a direct line to the organization's earlier win. "Fifty years ago, the ACLU won a Supreme Court victory against a nearly identical Kentucky law, and we aim to do it again," Wang said. "In our country, no legislature can force its preferred scripture on public school students and families."
That 1980 case, Stone v. Graham, held that Kentucky's Ten Commandments display law had no secular purpose and served only a religious one. The Fifth Circuit's majority effectively declared that ruling a dead letter after the Supreme Court abandoned the Lemon test. If the justices agree to hear the Texas case, they will have to decide whether Stone still means anything, or whether the legal ground has shifted enough to let states put scripture on classroom walls.
Meanwhile, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has moved to enforce SB 10 on the ground. He required more than two dozen school districts to produce documents showing whether they have posted the Ten Commandments and detailing their policies for complying with the law. That enforcement push, running alongside the legal challenge, signals that Texas does not intend to wait for the Supreme Court before pressing schools to act.
The case also lands at a moment when federal courts are actively reshaping state-level policy on issues from education to immigration. Judges across the country are drawing new lines around what states can and cannot require, and the Supreme Court's willingness to step in, or stand aside, carries weight far beyond any single statute.
In their written petition, the challengers framed the question in sweeping terms:
"The question of whether a state may impose scripture on impressionable, captive-audience children, for nearly every hour of every school day, for up to thirteen years, implicates the most fundamental guarantees of the First Amendment and our Nation's highest ideals."
Supporters of the law see it differently. The Fifth Circuit's majority argued that posting a historical religious text is not the same as establishing a state religion. No child is compelled to pray, recite, or believe. The display sits on the wall, and, in the court's view, that is all it does.
Conservatives who cheered the Fifth Circuit's ruling may find the ACLU's framing overheated. But the underlying question is real, and it cuts in directions that should give both sides pause. If a state can require one set of scriptures on the wall, it can require another, and the families who filed this petition include people of deep faith who simply do not want the government picking which version of it their children see every morning.
The Supreme Court has been willing to act decisively on contested cultural questions in recent terms. Whether it takes this one will say a great deal about how far the current majority is prepared to go, and how much room it intends to leave for states that want to bring religion back into the public square.
That tension between political pressure on the court and the justices' own reading of the Constitution is the real story here. The ACLU wants to relitigate 1980. Texas wants to bury it. Only nine people get to decide.
If the court ducks the case, the Fifth Circuit's ruling stands, and every state legislature in the country will notice. That is not a result the ACLU can afford, and it is not one the justices can easily ignore.
