Texas can force schools to post Ten Commandments, federal appeals court rules
By Jaden Edison, The Texas Tribune
January 20, 2026
Texas can enforce a state law requiring public schools to display posters of the Ten Commandments in classrooms, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.
A majority of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Texas officials’ favor, concluding that the law does not establish an official state religion.
“It does not tell churches or synagogues or mosques what to believe or how to worship or whom to employ as priests, rabbis, or imams,” according to the ruling. “It punishes no one who rejects the Ten Commandments, no matter the reason.”
The court heard arguments in January after 16 families sued over the law, alleging that it amounted to state leaders promoting their interpretation of Christianity over other faiths.
All 17 active judges on the court listened to the case — Rabbi Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District — alongside a similar challenge in Louisiana, the first state to pass a Ten Commandments requirement for its public schools. The court cleared the way in February for Louisiana to fully implement its law.
After Tuesday’s decision, the civil rights organizations representing the families expressed disappointment.
“The court’s ruling goes against fundamental First Amendment principles and binding U.S. Supreme Court authority,” the groups said in a statement. “The First Amendment safeguards the separation of church and state, and the freedom of families to choose how, when and if to provide their children with religious instruction. This decision tramples those rights.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton celebrated the decision, calling it a major victory for Texas and its “moral values.”
“My office was proud to defend SB 10 and successfully ensure that the Ten Commandments will be displayed in classrooms across Texas,” Paxton said. “The Ten Commandments have had a profound impact on our nation, and it’s important that students learn from them every single day.”
The case is playing a central role in the national debate over whether the laws violate the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which prohibits governments from endorsing or promoting a particular religion. The civil rights organizations said they plan to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the decision.
Here’s what we know.
Background: The Texas Legislature passed Senate Bill 10 in 2025, with Gov. Greg Abbott signing it into law that June. It requires public schools to display donated posters of the Ten Commandments, sized at least 16 by 20 inches, in a visible space on classroom walls.
The families — represented by a coalition of civil rights organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas — sued 11 school districts to block what their lawyers called “catastrophically unconstitutional” legislation.
U.S. District Judge Fred Biery agreed, blocking the law from taking effect in the districts named in the lawsuit: Alamo Heights, North East, Lackland, Northside, Austin, Lake Travis, Dripping Springs, Houston, Fort Bend, Cypress-Fairbanks and Plano.
Biery concluded the law improperly favors Christianity over other faiths and said it would likely interfere with families’ “exercise of their sincere religious or nonreligious beliefs in substantial ways.”
Paxton asked the 5th Circuit Court to overturn Biery’s ruling and allow all 17 active judges on the court to hear the Texas and Louisiana cases together.
A federal judge blocked Louisiana’s Ten Commandments law from taking effect in 2024, a decision unanimously upheld last year by a panel of three judges on the 5th Circuit Court. Twelve of the appeals court’s judges were appointed by Republican presidents. The court is considered one of the most conservative in the nation.
The arguments for the case did not include two other prominent Texas lawsuits challenging the Ten Commandments law.
One lawsuit resulted in a federal judge blocking 14 more school districts from complying with the law. The other asks a federal judge to block all Texas schools from following the law and is pending.
Why the families sued: They argued that the law subjects children to a state-imposed Protestant version of the Ten Commandments that many religious and nonreligious Texans do not recognize.
The families believe the law seeks to pressure students into observing and adopting Texas officials’ preferred religious principles.
They say the law will inflict harm by alienating children of those who do not follow the state’s preferred religion and that parents’ authority to direct their children’s religious education is undermined.
“Posting the Ten Commandments in public schools is un-American and un-Baptist,” Griff Martin, a pastor, parent and plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in a statement last year. “S.B. 10 undermines the separation of church and state as a bedrock principle of my family’s Baptist heritage. Baptists have long held that the government has no role in religion — so that our faith may remain free and authentic.”
The families’ lawyers argue that because children are legally required to attend school, they have virtually no way of avoiding Texas’ required version of the Ten Commandments.
The U.S. Supreme Court found public school displays of the Ten Commandments unconstitutional in 1980. Civil rights attorneys argue that only the Supreme Court can overturn its previous rulings.
What the state argues: Paxton and attorneys from his office say the Ten Commandments played a significant role in the nation’s history and heritage. State leaders have said previous rulings from federal courts and the U.S. Supreme Court did not examine that historical significance.
State lawyers also note that the Supreme Court recently eliminated a test, established by a previous ruling, that determined when a government had unconstitutionally endorsed or established a religion.
“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 last year.
Lawyers with the attorney general’s office see the Ten Commandments requirement as requiring only a “passive display on the wall” that does not rise to the level of coercion because students are free to ignore the posters. The law might cross the line if it sought to incorporate the Ten Commandments into lessons or assignments, they argued.
The posters must go up in Texas classrooms only if donated by someone. The law does not specify what would happen if school leaders choose not to comply. The state views that as evidence no threat or harm is posed to families. However, Paxton threatened legal action if schools do not comply and sued three districts for alleged noncompliance.
What happened during oral arguments: Some judges questioned state officials from Texas and Louisiana about their decisions to use a Protestant version of the Ten Commandments and how that would affect families who do not follow those religious principles.
Lawyers for the states argued that the laws do not ask children to subscribe to a particular belief and urged the judges to consider legislators’ intent to teach students about important documents in U.S. history.
The judges questioned how children would know the posters have anything to do with American history. They also asked for historical evidence showing the use of the Ten Commandments in public schools.
Lawyers for the states pointed to early textbooks that referenced the Ten Commandments but acknowledged those materials were largely used in religious settings prior to the establishment of public schools in the 1800s.
Public schools used the materials through the early 20th century. However, a prominent historian who testified in the case noted that the Ten Commandments were not significant aspects of the texts and that it is unclear how much teachers relied on those specific lessons.
“A legislature in Louisiana, a legislature in Texas, is absolutely well within its right to say: We want to actually teach our students about founding documents,” said Ben Aguiñaga, the attorney representing Louisiana.
Judges asked the lawyers representing the families why they consider the Ten Commandments posters problematic when students recite the Pledge of Allegiance and learn about the Declaration of Independence and Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail — all of which refer to God.
King’s letter and the Declaration of Independence may reference religion, the lawyers replied, but they’re about more than religion.
Some judges noted during arguments that the Supreme Court’s 1980 ruling heavily relied on a test that courts no longer use. The families’ lawyers countered that removing the test did not overturn Supreme Court precedent preventing the Ten Commandments from going up in public classrooms.
If students do not follow the religious principles in the state’s mandated version of the Ten Commandments, judges asked, can’t they ignore the posters?
“They can’t just look away, your honor,” said attorney Jon Youngwood, representing the families. “Not for 13 years. Not in every class. Not every minute of every day.”
What the court ruled: A court majority concluded that the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1980 ruling in Stone v. Graham is no longer valid. That case found a Kentucky law requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court recently abandoned the test established in Stone that determined whether states had illegally endorsed or promoted a religion, the 5th U.S. Circuit judges noted. That means “there is nothing left of Stone,” they noted in the ruling.
They concluded that Texas’ Ten Commandments law does not establish an official state religion. Among reasons, they noted that it “levies no taxes to support any clergy. It does not co-opt churches to perform civic functions.”
The judges ruled that the law is not coercive because it does not require students to learn the Ten Commandments or give teachers authority to undermine students’ religious beliefs.
“Yes, Plaintiffs have sincere religious disagreements with its content,” the opinion reads. “But that does not transform the poster into a summons to prayer.”
An opinion written by judges who opposed the decision argued in response that it is insignificant that Texas’ law does not require schools to teach the Ten Commandments.
The law poses a threat to children’s religious beliefs and undermines what parents may want their kids to learn about religion, they wrote in dissenting statements.
The opposing judges agreed with the argument of families who sued that the Supreme Court has not overturned its Stone v. Graham ruling. Lower courts are bound by Stone even if the test established in it is no longer in use, they added. Taking into account the historical-based approach courts must now use, the dissenting judges said Texas’ law still violates the Constitution.
This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.