Texas public schools enroll upwards of 5.5 million students. These students and their families adhere to an array of faiths, and many do not practice any religion at all. Yet a newly enacted Texas law, S.B. 10, seeks to impose one religious perspective on all Texas schoolchildren by requiring Texas public schools to post the Ten Commandments in every classroom. Under S.B. 10, public-school students will be forcibly subjected to scriptural dictates, day in and day out. Children of all faiths will be told through these displays “I AM the LORD thy God” and “Thou shalt have no other gods before me”—leaving many of them excluded and uncomfortable in their own classrooms.
On July 2, 2025, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP filed a lawsuit in the Western District of Texas on behalf of a multifaith group of sixteen families with children in Texas public schools. The plaintiffs, who are Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Unitarian Universalist, and non-religious, assert that S.B. 10 is a violation of the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment.
Our suit argues that, through S.B. 10, Texas is adopting an official religious text and taking an official position on religious issues in clear violation of the Establishment Clause’s guarantee of separation of church and state. S.B. 10 coerces children to view, venerate, and obey commandments that are against their beliefs and the displays interfere with parents’ ability to direct their children’s religious upbringing. The law therefore also violates the Free Exercise Clause, which protects the right to hold and exercise religious beliefs of one’s choice, including no religious beliefs.
Plaintiffs ask for a judgment from the court that the law is unconstitutional and an order that prohibits implementation of the law and the posting of the Commandments.
On August 20, 2025, in a victory for religious freedom, the district court granted a preliminary injunction blocking the defendant school districts from implementing S.B. 10. In so ruling, the court explained that “the displays are likely to pressure the child-Plaintiffs into religious observance, meditation on, veneration, and adoption of the State’s favored religious scripture, and into suppressing expression of their own religious or nonreligious background and beliefs while at school.” The defendants are appealing the district court’s ruling to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Despite the district court’s August 20 ruling, some Texas school districts—that were not initially defendants in our lawsuit—have moved forward with displaying the Ten Commandments in classrooms. So we joined our allies in filing another lawsuit, on behalf of group of 15 multi-faith and nonreligious Texas families, naming a new group of school districts as defendants.
