A group of multifaith families in Texas filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court Aug. 17 challenging a state law mandating Ten Commandments displays in all public-school classrooms.
The filing by more than two dozen Baha’i, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Unitarian Universalist and nonreligious parents and students asked the court to overturn the Fifth U.S. District Court of Appeals’ April ruling that the law does not constitute a government endorsement of religion.
“The court should grant the petition because the court of appeals, in upholding SB-10, flouted this court’s binding precedents and gutted the religious freedom rights of public-school children and parents,” the plaintiffs assert.
At issue is Senate Bill 10, a measure passed by the Texas Legislature in May 2025 and signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott the next month. It requires school districts to place 16-by-20-inch displays of a Protestant version of the Decalogue in district classrooms statewide.
The law requires school districts to place 16-by-20-inch displays of a Protestant version of the Decalogue in district classrooms statewide.
The petitioners were plaintiffs in two separate-but-similar lawsuits filed against the law and the school districts that sought to implement it. After success at the federal district court levels, Cribbs Ringer v. Comal Independent School District and Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District hit a roadblock in the appellate decision clearing the way for implementation of the SB-10.
As the litigation did, the new petition argues the Texas law violates the First Amendment’s ban against government establishment of religion: “The statute imposes on public-school children, for nearly every hour they are in school, the state’s favored Scripture: the Ten Commandments, drawn from the King James Bible.”
The law also violates the free exercise of religion by denying Texas families the right to solely direct the religious upbringing of their children, the plaintiffs contend: “SB-10’s displays will impose religious doctrine in a manner that conflicts with the families’ religious beliefs, values and practices taught at home; sow religious confusion and exclusion among the children; and force parents to attempt to counter the state’s religious instruction rather than approaching their children’s religious or nonreligious development in accordance with their own beliefs.”
Petitioners’ viewpoints are presented to illustrate the ways the Texas laws would interfere with students’ spiritual development.
Mara Richards Bim
Baptist minister Mara Richards Bim, for example, said her family and church place the emphasis on the commandments of Jesus to love God and neighbor in the religious instruction of her child, H.B., and that Texas has no right to interfere in the that process.
“‘It is critical that this text (the Ten Commandments) be presented to H.B. by me or through my family’s church, at the proper time, in the correct context, and in the biblical translation used by our family and church,’” said Bim, a Clemons Fellow with Baptist News Global and the first Justice and Advocacy Fellow at Royal Lane Baptist Church in Dallas.
SB-10 instead “will impose the state’s translation (drawn from the King James Version of the Bible) on H.B. every day, in every classroom.”
Cantor Seth Ettinger and Sarah Ettinger said the law interferes with their ability to raise their child, R.E., in the Jewish faith. While they believe “the Ten Commandments are a sacred Jewish text, the version required by SB-10 does not align with our family’s Jewish belief and tradition and what we teach R.E.”
The petition also cites earlier Supreme Court decisions to make the case against the Texas law, including the 1980 ruling in Stone v. Graham that once again barred Kentucky from placing Ten Commandants displays in public-school classrooms.
The court of appeals “purported to unilaterally overrule this court’s decision in Stone v. Graham, which struck down a nearly identical Kentucky statute almost 50 years ago. Stone followed from prior precedents of this court and was reinforced by later ones,” the appeal explains.
The petitioners also reference Mahmoud v. Taylor, a 2025 decision affirming parents’ claims that a school district’s inclusion of LGBTQ instructional material violated their ability to control their children’s religious development.
The justices “should grant the petition because the decisions below contravene this court’s recent ruling in Mahmoud and destabilize free-exercise law,” the petition argues. “If the permanent, unavoidable imposition of biblical Scripture in public-school classrooms does not interfere with, or threaten to undermine, parents’ ability to direct their children’s religious education and to instill particular religious beliefs and practices, it is difficult to imagine what would.”
Petitioners are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and ACLU of Texas, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the Freedom from Religion Foundation and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP.