More than two dozen Texas families are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down a state law that mandates a Protestant version of the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom, setting up a major new test of government-endorsed religious expression in schools.
In a petition filed Monday, the families urged the justices to review an April ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit that upheld Texas Senate Bill 10, the 2025 statute requiring “a state-mandated version of the Ten Commandments, drawn from the Protestant King James Bible,” to be permanently displayed in a “conspicuous” place in every classroom from kindergarten through 12th grade, according to a press release from the ACLU of Texas.
The families—described by their lawyers as coming from a range of religious and nonreligious backgrounds—are represented by civil-liberties organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union and its Texas affiliate, which argue that SB 10 unconstitutionally favors one religious tradition and pressures students to conform to the state’s preferred beliefs. In their Supreme Court filing, the challengers contend that the law “imposes scripture on impressionable, captive-audience children” and interferes with parents’ rights to direct their children’s religious upbringing, arguments summarized in coverage by SCOTUSblog.
SB 10 was passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature and signed by Governor Greg Abbott in 2025, with supporters portraying the classroom displays as a way to highlight what they see as the moral and historical foundations of American law. As the law took effect for the 2025–26 school year, some districts began hanging the mandated posters, while others held back amid legal uncertainty created by a series of federal lawsuits brought by parents, according to reporting from The Texas Tribune.
The first major court setback to the law came in November 2025, when U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia issued a preliminary injunction ordering a group of Texas school districts to remove Ten Commandments displays by December 1 and barring them from putting up new ones. In his order, Judge Garcia wrote that displaying the Ten Commandments on classroom walls “as set forth in S.B. 10 violates the Establishment Clause,” concluding that it was “impractical, if not impossible” to shield students from the state-sponsored religious message without blocking enforcement of the law across the affected districts, according to an account from the ACLU.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton appealed, and in April 2026 the full 5th Circuit, sitting en banc, reversed the injunctions and upheld SB 10 in a 9–8 decision. The majority concluded that requiring passive displays of the Ten Commandments did not violate the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause or parents’ rights, emphasizing that students are not required to read or recite the text and that the law fits within what the court saw as a longstanding tradition of religious references in public life, as described in a summary from the National Constitution Center’s analysis of Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District and in a statement by the ACLU.
In their Supreme Court petition, the families argue that the 5th Circuit “flouted this Court’s binding precedents and gutted the religious-freedom rights of public-school children and parents,” language quoted by SCOTUSblog. Their lawyers point in particular to the Supreme Court’s 1980 decision in Stone v. Graham, which struck down a Kentucky law requiring the Ten Commandments to be posted in public school classrooms because it lacked a secular purpose, and they contend that the Texas statute similarly serves an overtly religious goal by elevating one specific scriptural text.
Supporters of SB 10, including state officials and advocacy groups that pushed for its passage, counter that the law simply allows schools to acknowledge the role of the Ten Commandments in the nation’s legal heritage and does not force any student to accept religious doctrine. In defending the statute before the 5th Circuit, the state argued that the displays are akin to other historical references to religion that courts have allowed, such as legislative prayers or religious language in public monuments, a rationale reflected in the appeals court majority’s opinion and summarized by outlets including The Texas Tribune.
The Texas case lands at a time when several states are testing the boundaries of religious expression in public schools. Legislatures in Louisiana, Arkansas and Alabama have advanced or approved measures encouraging or requiring Ten Commandments displays, drawing both support from some Christian activists and opposition from religious liberty groups that warn against government-favored scripture, according to reporting from PBS NewsHour and other outlets. The Supreme Court is expected to decide later this year whether to hear the Texas families’ appeal; if it does, the case could become one of the term’s most closely watched church–state disputes.