Two Texas Baptists — including a BNG staff member — are among 16 multifaith and nonreligious Texas families who filed suit in federal court today to oppose the state’s new Ten Commandments law.
This is the second lawsuit filed against the new law passed by Republicans in the Texas Legislature and signed by Gov. Greg Abbott June 21.
The other suit was filed June 24 by a coalition of Muslim and Christian parents.
Both suits challenge the new state law mandating the Ten Commandments — part of Jewish and Christian Scripture — be posted in all public school classrooms. The bill mirrors legislation adopted in Louisiana and Arkansas. The Louisiana bill already has been ruled unconstitutional, but Louisiana’s governor has said he wants to push the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he hopes a sympathetic conservative majority will overturn Supreme Court precedent. Forty-five years ago, in Stone v. Graham, the high court struck down a similar Kentucky law.
The public displays of the Decalogue are part of a nationwide agenda for evangelical Christians, empowered by Donald Trump’s return to the White House and influence of Project 2025.
The public displays of the Decalogue are part of a nationwide agenda for evangelical Christians.
The first Texas lawsuit was brought by Next Generation Action Network Legal Advocacy Fund and filed in the Northern District of Texas. It argues that SB-10 violates the First Amendment and interferes with the rights of parents to lead their children’s religious education.
“Our schools are not theocratic temples,” said Dominique Alexander, a plaintiff in the lawsuit and president of NGAN. “Our pulpits must stay free of state mandates. Our children deserve education, not indoctrination.”
This lawsuit names as defendants school districts in Dallas, DeSoto and Lancaster along with Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath.
In addition to Dominique Alexander, other plaintiffs in this first case include Gerald Weatherall and Shanneca Weatherall, Ryant X. Phelps, Kevin Harris, Tiara Cooper, and Al-Shaheed Muhammad and Zaeta Muhammad.
Griff Martin
Plaintiffs in the second suit, filed today, include Abigail Martin and Griff Martin, pastor of First Baptist Church of Austin, and Mara Richards Bim, justice and advocacy resident at Royal Lane Baptist Church in Dallas and a Clemons Fellow with BNG.
Mara Bim
Other plaintiffs in this case, called Rabbi Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District, include Mara Nathan, Virginia Galaviz Eisenberg and Ron Eisenberg, Seth Ettinger and Sarah Ettinger, Elizabeth Lemaster, Carah Helwig, Alyssa Martin and Cody Barker, Lauren Erwin, Rebekah Lowe and Theodore Lowe, Marissa Norden and Wiley Norden, Joshua Fixler, Cynthia Mood, Cheryl Rebecca Smith, Arvind Chandrakantan, and Allison Fitzpatrick.
They are represented by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Freedom from Religion Foundation, with Simpson Thacher and Bartlett serving as pro bono counsel.
This suit names as defendants school districts Alamo Heights, North East, Lackland, Northside, Austin, Lake Travis, Dripping Springs, Houston, Fort Bend, Cypress Fairbanks, and Plano. All these districts are in the metro areas of San Antonio, Austin, Houston and Dallas.
Plaintiffs said they plan to file a motion for a preliminary injunction, asking the court to prevent the defendants from implementing the law pending resolution of the litigation.
“Posting the Ten Commandments in public schools is un-American and un-Baptist,” said Griff Martin. “SB-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. My children’s faith should be shaped by family and our religious community, not by a Christian nationalist movement that confuses God with power.”
Rabbi Mara Nathan said the Texas law not only forces religious teaching on children but imposes “another faith’s Scripture on students for nearly every hour of the school day. 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.”
Arvind Chandrakantan, a Hindu, said: “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.”
The Texas law requires the scriptural postings to be a minimum of 16 x 20 inches in size and hung in a “conspicuous place” in each classroom. The commandments must be printed “in a size and typeface that is legible to a person with average vision from anywhere in the room.”
Rachel Laser, president of Americans United, said the Texas law is part of a “nationwide Christian nationalist scheme to win favor for one set of religious views over all others and over nonreligion in a country that promises religious freedom.”
The Texas law is “blatantly unconstitutional,” said Heather L. Weaver, senior counsel for the ACLU’s Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief. “States may not require children to attend school and then impose Scripture on them everywhere they go.”
Related articles:
Abbott signs Texas Ten Commandments bill, setting up court fight
Appeals court stops Louisiana Ten Commandments law
Texas House joins Senate in bill requiring Ten Commandments
The Ten Commandments and the tyranny of minority rule | Analysis by Mara Richards Bim