Nearly five weeks into the school year, students and staff have become accustomed to a new poster hanging on each and every classroom wall: the Ten Commandments.

However, U.S. District Court Judge Fred Biery has temporarily blocked the law mandating the display of the Ten Commandments for 11 school districts on Aug. 20 in response to a lawsuit challenging the mandate.

Background on SB 10 –

Filed on Feb. 10 during the 89th Legislative Session, Senate Bill 10 (SB 10) mandates the display of the Ten Commandments in every classroom of public elementary and secondary schools. In addition to specifying the actual content of the poster word-for-word, the bill requires that the Ten Commandments be displayed as “a durable poster or framed copy… in a size and typeface legible to a person with average vision from anywhere in the classroom… [and] be at least 16 inches wide and 20 inches tall”.

Schools without these posters in every classroom may choose to use district funds to purchase posters and are obligated to accept any private donations of posters, bearing that the posters follow the aforementioned requirements and do not contain any other content.

The law was set to take effect on Sept. 1, although some school districts – including Frisco ISD – chose to display the posters at the start of the school year. 

The lawsuit –

The lawsuit in question was filed by representatives across 11 school districts covering a wide array of religions – Jewish, Hindu, Christian, and Unitarian Universalist – against the school district themselves: Alamo Heights ISD, North East ISD, Lackland ISD, Northside ISD, Austin ISD, Lake Travis ISD, Dripping Springs ISD, Houston ISD, Fort Bend ISD, Cypress Fairbanks ISD, and Plano ISD.

Represented by the Freedom from Religion Foundation, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the plaintiffs allege that SB 10 will impact the more than “5.5 million students… enrolled in more than 9,000 public… schools across [Texas]… [who] adhere to an array of faiths… [or] do not practice any religion at all… [by] forcibly subject[ing them] to scriptural dictates, day in and day out” and that the law “cannot be reconciled with the fundamental religious-freedom principles that animated the Founding of our nation.”

Throughout the complaint section itself, the suit refers to multiple legal precedents, including two that directly deal with the question of the posting of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms:

• Stone v. Graham was a 1980 Supreme Court case that dealt with a similar law mandating the display of the Ten Commandments in Kentucky. The Supreme Court ruled (5-4) against the law, arguing that the law violated the first part of Lemon v. Kurtzman (a 1971 case that significantly shaped the debate on the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment through the creation of the “Lemon test”), “had no secular legislative purpose” as the Commandments were not restricted to purely secular issues (such as stealing or murder), and “was ‘purely religious in nature’”.
• Roake v. Brumley is an ongoing case filed in 2024 in Louisiana challenging the state’s House Bill 71 that also mandates the display of the Ten Commandments in classrooms on the basis that the law violates both the Establishment Clause (separation of church and state) and Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.

What next?

Currently, the law faces a temporary block on implementation. While the block doesn’t extend to all school districts, the ruling impacts the dozen or so school districts actually named in the lawsuit.

In Biery’s ruling, the judge stated that while “the Ten Commandments would not be affirmatively taught, the captive audience of students likely would have questions, which teachers would feel compelled to answer.”

This lawsuit – known as Rabbi Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District – comes in addition to another lawsuit filed in late June by plaintiffs being families and faith leaders from Dallas of Christian and Nation of Islam faiths. In addition to naming several school districts themselves, the suit also names Texas Commissioner of Education Mike Morath and the Texas Education Agency as defendants. 

Since the block, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has issued a statement requiring all Texas Independent School Districts who are “not enjoined by ongoing litigation” to continue to adhere to SB 10 and display the Ten Commandments as mandated.

On Sept. 2, Paxton appealed to the “U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to hear the case en banc, meaning before all active judges of the court, rather than just a three-judge panel.”

“There is no legal reason to stop Texas from honoring a core ethical foundation of our law, especially not a bogus claim about the ‘separation of church and state,’ which is a phrase found nowhere in the Constitution,” Paxton said according to the Attorney General of Texas website.