On June 21, 2025, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed over 300 bills into law. Among them is Senate Bill 10 (SB10), which requires every public school classroom to display a copy of the Ten Commandments.
Louisiana passed a similar law in 2024. The state lost in a Fifth Circuit appeals court just the day before Texas passed its own Ten Commandments law. With civil rights groups lining up to file against SB10, precedent would seem to indicate that the Texas law will suffer the same fate.
A petition to the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) seems inevitable. Stone v. Graham has a long history of being the primary standard by which the separation of church and state is judged, but will the conservative majority turn to Kennedy v. Bremerton School District instead?
Reading, Writing, and ... Religion?
The Ten Commandments are a cornerstone of Judeo-Christian religions. According to the tenets of holy scripture, they are rules from God instructing believers on how to behave. While the majority contain orders that are reflected in society's laws — don't murder, steal, tell lies, etc. — four specifically focus on the proper worship of the deity.
While those might be pertinent to the roughly two-thirds of Texas residents who identify as either Christian or Jewish, the remaining 10 million-plus might view the imposition of only one religion in public classrooms as a violation of their Constitutional rights. If they do, there's legal precedent to support their position.
In 1980, SCOTUS's decision in Stone v. Graham ruled that a Kentucky law demanding that all classrooms must contain a posted copy of the Ten Commandments was in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This was cited as the legal basis behind the ruling by a Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals panel on June 20, 2025, which affirmed a lower court's decision that a 2024 Louisiana law ordering the placement of the Ten Commandments in public classrooms was also unconstitutional.
Louisiana's argument touted opinions from SCOTUS Justices Clarence Thomas and Neal Gorsuch asserting that Stone v. Graham should be overturned, but that gained no traction with the appeals panel, which returned a unanimous decision. While the Fifth Circuit is often considered one of the most conservative-leaning in the country, considering binding SCOTUS precedent, the judges really had no choice. Only the Supreme Court can overturn its own precedent.
Legislation With a Destination
The text of Texas's SB10 law states that after the title, the poster's first line is "I AM the LORD thy God." Critics have been quick to note that Texas would have been hard pressed to create a more blatant example of a government imposing a specific religion on the public. It seems like a law designed to lose in court, which raises the question — is it on purpose?
SCOTUS's decision in 2022's Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, in which it ruled that a high school coach could lead a voluntary prayer group on a school's athletic field after a game, provided a glimmer of hope for those who believe public schools should embrace Christianity.
While Kennedy v. Bremerton School District isn't a direct repudiation of Stone v. Graham, whatever Ten Commandments case that eventually lands before SCOTUS will likely be hoping that Justices Thomas and Gorsuch will expand on the Bremerton holding and overturn Stone v. Graham.
Of course, if the Ten Commandments are approved for mandatory posting in public classrooms, will similar demands from groups like the Church of Satan be far behind?
Related Resources
- Learning Judicial Precedent: A Q&A With Bryan Garner (FindLaw's Surviving Law School)
- The First Amendment: Freedom of Religion, Speech, and the Press (FindLaw's U.S. Constitution)
- Justice Kagan Throws Shade at Shadow Docket (FindLaw's Federal Courts)
