Texas families sue over law requiring Ten Commandments in classrooms

The Plaintiffs say the law pushes Christianity in public schools, and the politicians who voted for it admitted as much

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Texas families represented by a coalition of church/state separation groups have filed a federal lawsuit against a Texas law that would force public schools to display the Ten Commandments—King James’ Version only—in every classroom.

A Ten Commandments monument (image via Adobe Spark)

You may recall that Texas recently passed a bill, appropriately titled SB 10, despite widespread opposition. (One Democratic lawmaker did his best to highlight the hypocrisy of the people voting for the bill as well as the possible backlash it might receive.)

Like so many other iterations of these bills, this one said every classroom would have to display a durable or framed 16” x 20” poster of the Ten Commandments. They could be privately donated or bought “using district funds.” All of the posters would have to read as follows:

The Ten Commandments

I AM the LORD thy God.

Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven images.

Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain.

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.

Thou shalt not kill.

Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Thou shalt not steal.

Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house.

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his cattle, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s.

The law also includes a provision requiring the attorney general of the state to defend districts that get sued over this. If they were to lose the case, the state would then be “liable for the expenses, costs, judgments, or settlements of the claims arising out of the representation.” Which is to say if this ends up backfiring on Christian Nationalists, don’t worry, because taxpayers will foot the bill for their ignorance.

When they tried a similar gambit two years ago, the bill didn’t make it to a final vote in the State House. That wasn’t a problem this time around. The Republicans (and a handful of Democrats) just ignored all the opposition, including a letter signed by over 150 Christian and Jewish leaders who said the bill “undermines the faith and freedom we cherish.”

Louisiana already passed an identical law last year, but a federal judge struck it down as unconstitutional and an appellate court recently upheld that decision. Arkansas passed its own version of the bill last month, and they’ve already been sued over it. Texas could be the largest and most influential state to get this one on the books.

But not if the Plaintiffs have anything to do with it.

The 16 families are represented by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the ACLU of Texas, the ACLU (national), and the Freedom From Religion Foundation. (Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP is assisting with the case for free.) Those are basically the same groups that filed both the Louisiana lawsuit and the Arkansas one.

Interestingly enough, they’re not suing the state. This lawsuit goes after the school districts. It says the kids in those families shouldn’t be force-fed this harmful religious messaging. It also mentions the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor, the one that allows religious families to “opt out” their children from public school lessons that contradict their religious beliefs, gives them the right to oppose the Ten Commandments being shoved in children’s faces.

Under this precedent, permanently posting the Ten Commandments in every Texas public-school classroom—rendering them unavoidable—is plainly unconstitutional. The displays will pressure students, including the minor-child Plaintiffs, into religious observance, veneration, and adoption of the state’s favored religious scripture. The displays will also send the harmful and religiously divisive message that students who do not subscribe to the Ten Commandments—or, more precisely, to the specific version of the Ten Commandments that S. B. 10 requires—do not belong in their own school community, pressuring them to refrain from expressing any faith practices or beliefs that are not aligned with the state’s religious preferences. And the displays will substantially interfere with and burden the right of the parents-Plaintiffs, who are Jewish, Christian, Unitarian Universalist, Hindu, or nonreligious, to direct their children’s education and upbringing when it comes to religious questions and matters.

Along the way, they have receipts from lawmakers who very clearly voted for this bill because they want to foist Christianity on kids, including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who said this law meant that students “in every classroom in Texas, they are going to see the Ten Commandments, and they are going to know about God.” The bill’s sponsor Sen. Phil King also said, “[W]e want every kid, [pre-K] through twelve, every day, in every classroom they sit in, to look on the wall and read… those words that God says because we want them to understand how important that those statements of God, those rules of God, are that they see them in their classroom every single day of their public education.”

The Plaintiffs in Rabbi Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District include a variety of religious and non-religious families. Here’s just a glimpse:

Plaintiff Allison Fitzpatrick (she/her) says: “We are nonreligious and don’t follow the explicitly religious commandments, such as ‘remember the Sabbath.’ Every day that the posters are up in classrooms will signal to my children that they are violating school rules.”

“As a rabbi and public-school parent, I am deeply concerned that SB 10 will impose another faith’s scripture on students for nearly every hour of the school day,” says plaintiff Rabbi Mara Nathan (she/her). “While our Jewish faith treats the Ten Commandments as sacred, the version mandated under this law does not match the text followed by our family, and the school displays will conflict with the religious beliefs and values we seek to instill in our child.”

…

“SB 10 imposes a specific, rules-based set of norms that is at odds with my Hindu faith,” says plaintiff Arvind Chandrakantan (he/him). “Displaying the Ten Commandments in my children’s classrooms sends the message that certain aspects of Hinduism — like believing in multiple paths to God (pluralism) or venerating murthis (statues) as the living, breathing, physical representations of God — are wrong. Public schools — and the state of Texas — have no place pushing their preferred religious beliefs on my children, let alone denigrating my faith, which is about as un-American and un-Texan as one can be.”

It’s truly ingenious that these families are, in their own defense, citing a Supreme Court decision meant to give (mostly) Christian zealots veto power over LGBTQ-themed books in the classroom.

The lawsuit is also interesting because there’s a good chance it will eventually end up in front of the notoriously conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, but that’s the very court that already struck down Louisiana’s law.

Much like the Arkansas lawsuit, this one notes that a SCOTUS decision from a case from nearly five decades ago, Stone v. Graham, declared a virtually identical law in Kentucky unconstitutional. That’s the decision cited by the district court judge who struck down Louisiana’s law, who said in his ruling, “This District Court remains bound to follow Stone until the Supreme Court overrules it.”

The lawsuit also notes that in the Stone case and in Louisiana, the Ten Commandments were required to have a “context statement”—a disclaimer of sorts—alongside the posters, explaining the supposed historical relevance of the Decalogue. They didn’t even bother with that in Texas. So if those previous laws were declared illegal, this one is even more egregious.

The fact is that by mandating the Ten Commandments in every classroom, the state is effectively telling kids which religion counts—and which ones don’t. They’re sending a message that kids from non-Christian families (or the “wrong” kind of Christian ones!) are second-class citizens.

The lawsuit says the state is violating the First Amendment’s Establishment and Free Exercise clauses. But because lawsuits take a while to get resolved, the Plaintiffs are asking the judge for a preliminary injunction to prevent the law from going into effect on September 1 as intended—before the start of the next school year.

(Another lawsuit against this law has also been filed by the Next Generation Action Network Legal Advocacy Fund.)

While some legal cases depend on how a judge interprets the facts, this one is about as clear-cut as they come. Texas passed an illegal law, made up details about American history to defend their position, and practically bragged about their true intentions along the way. Any judge should be able to admit all that while striking down this law before any school has to decide how best to promote Christianity in the classrooms.

(Portions of this article were published earlier because Christian Nationalists are using the same broken playbook as always)

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