WASHINGTON — Civil rights advocates on Monday said they asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review a Texas law requiring public schools to display the Ten Commandments, teeing up a case that could set a new national standard for the limits of state-sponsored religious expression in classrooms.
Over two dozen Texas families represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups petitioned the nation’s highest court to overturn a split decision in April by the conservative-leaning 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The New Orleans-based appeals court’s 9-8 ruling upheld the Texas law, which requires public school classrooms to display a state-selected version of the Ten Commandments drawn from the King James Bible.
In their Supreme Court brief, the families’ attorneys argue that the law violates basic First Amendment principles governing the separation of church and state.
“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 (13) years – implicates the most fundamental guarantees of the First Amendment and our Nation’s highest ideals,” they wrote.
The 5th Circuit reversed a lower federal court ruling that had blocked approximately a dozen Texas school districts from putting up the posters. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed the law, which took effect last September.
Because Texas’ law only requires districts to hang the Ten Commandments if they are donated, conservative groups and individuals began dropping off boxes of posters at campuses across the state as the school year began last year.
“No child is made to recite the Commandments, believe them, or affirm their divine origin,” the 5th Circuit’s ruling says.
The 5th Circuit also ruled in February that Louisiana can enforce its own law requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in classrooms.
Republicans in the South have been leading the way in putting the Ten Commandments in classrooms. Louisiana became the first state to pass a requirement in 2024, followed by Arkansas and Texas. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed a similar law earlier this year.
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Stengle contributed to this report from Dallas.
