Civil rights groups have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down a Texas law requiring the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom, setting up a major First Amendment fight the high court's conservative majority may be eager to settle.

The ACLU of Texas, representing more than two dozen families, filed a petition urging the justices to review Senate Bill 10, the 2025 state law that requires every public school classroom from kindergarten through twelfth grade to post a "durable poster or framed copy" of the Ten Commandments with specific size and typeface requirements. The petition follows a narrow 9-8 ruling by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in April that upheld the law, reversing lower court decisions that had blocked the displays.

The case now lands on the doorstep of a Supreme Court with a 6-3 conservative majority, and a recent track record of siding with religious expression in public life. For families who support the law, the question is simple: the Ten Commandments shaped American legal tradition, and a poster on a classroom wall coerces no one. For the ACLU, the question is equally simple: the government has no business choosing scripture for other people's children.

Fifth Circuit split 9-8, overturning a 46-year-old precedent

The Fifth Circuit's April ruling did more than uphold the Texas statute. It effectively overturned the Supreme Court's 1980 decision in Stone v. Graham, which struck down a nearly identical Kentucky law requiring Ten Commandments displays in public school classrooms. That ruling found the Kentucky law had no secular purpose and served only a religious one. The Fifth Circuit disagreed, applying the Supreme Court's newer Kennedy v. Bremerton framework, which replaced the long-criticized Lemon test, and concluded the Texas law passes constitutional muster.

The appeals court was blunt in its reasoning. FOX 7 Austin reported the court wrote:

"[The Texas law] looks nothing like a historical religious establishment. It does not tell churches or synagogues or mosques what to believe or how to worship or whom to employ as priests, rabbis, or imams. It punishes no one who rejects the Ten Commandments, no matter the reason."

The court added that "no child is made to recite the Commandments, believe them, or affirm their divine origin." That distinction, between passive display and active coercion, sits at the heart of the legal dispute the Supreme Court will now decide whether to take up.

The Fifth Circuit also upheld a similar Ten Commandments display law in Louisiana. National Review noted the consolidated oral arguments in January 2026 lasted over an hour and forty minutes, with Judge Kyle Duncan signaling the court would apply the Kennedy standard rather than the abandoned Lemon test. The laws in both states require a nonsectarian version of the Ten Commandments, with no requirement for students to recite, memorize, or affirm belief in them. Similar laws have also been enacted in Arkansas and Alabama, making whatever the Supreme Court decides a nationwide precedent.

ACLU frames the fight around children and parental rights

The challengers are leaning hard on a parental-rights argument, a framing more often associated with the right than the left. ACLU of Texas attorney Chole Kempf said the petition is about keeping politicians out of family decisions on faith.

"Our nation's bedrock principle of separating church and state means that families and faith communities, not politicians, get to decide what role religion plays in children's lives. Texas students deserve public schools that welcome them for who they are, respect their religious or nonreligious backgrounds, and give them the high-quality education they need to build their futures."

Kempf also argued the displays create a hostile environment. "The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected this kind of government-imposed religion before, and it should do so again," she said. "Having these posters in Texas classrooms puts students at risk of bullying, stigmatization, and religious coercion."

The families' written petition to the court used sweeping language. It stated that "the question of whether a state may impose scripture on impressionable, captive-audience children, for nearly every hour of every school day, for up to thirteen years, implicates the most fundamental guarantees of the First Amendment and our Nation's highest ideals."

Among the named plaintiffs are Rebekah and Ted Lowe, who told the Washington Examiner that "Texas politicians shouldn't have a seat at the table in deciding how our children receive their religious education. That decision belongs to our family." Rabbi Joshua Fixler, another plaintiff, said the displays "put children in the position of having to defend themselves and their families' religious beliefs against a government mandate that makes them feel different and separate from their classmates."

The broader legal and political fight over religious liberty and parental rights has intensified across multiple fronts in recent years, with the federal government and state legislatures staking out increasingly firm positions on where faith belongs in public institutions.

ACLU national director invokes 1980 Kentucky victory

ACLU national legal director Cecillia Wang framed the petition as a rematch of a fight the organization won decades ago.

"Fifty years ago, the ACLU won a Supreme Court victory against a nearly identical Kentucky law, and we aim to do it again. In our country, no legislature can force its preferred scripture on public school students and families."

That 1980 ruling in Stone v. Graham found the Kentucky law violated the Establishment Clause because it lacked any secular purpose. But the legal landscape has shifted since then. The Supreme Court's 2022 decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the case of a Washington state football coach fired for praying on the field, abandoned the old Lemon test that had been the standard for decades. The Fifth Circuit relied heavily on that newer framework to reach the opposite conclusion from the 1980 court.

The ACLU's own petition acknowledged the doctrinal tension. It argued the appeals court "decided these cases in a way that conflicts with this Court's precedents but also deepened confusion among the lower courts over how this Court's Establishment Clause jurisprudence applies," Just The News reported. The Supreme Court is expected to consider the petition at a closed-door conference after its October term begins.

That timeline matters. If the justices agree to hear the case, oral arguments could come during the current term, with a decision by mid-2027. If they decline, the Fifth Circuit's ruling stands, and the Ten Commandments go up in Texas and Louisiana classrooms with full legal backing.

Texas is already enforcing the law

Texas is not waiting for the Supreme Court to act. State Attorney General Ken Paxton has already moved to ensure compliance, requiring more than two dozen school districts to produce documents showing whether they have posted the Ten Commandments and detailing their policies regarding SB 10.

That enforcement push signals the state intends to treat the Fifth Circuit's ruling as settled law unless and until the Supreme Court says otherwise. It also puts school administrators in a bind: comply with state law and risk an ACLU lawsuit, or resist and face the attorney general's office.

The case arrives at a moment when courts across the country are reconsidering the boundary between religious expression and government endorsement. A federal judge recently ordered a Washington state school district to stop restricting a Christian Bible program, and the Texas Supreme Court backed a Christian judge who declined to officiate same-sex weddings, both signs that the judiciary is moving toward broader protections for religious exercise in public settings.

The 9-8 split at the Fifth Circuit virtually guarantees the Supreme Court will face pressure to resolve the question. A one-vote margin on an issue this consequential, with similar laws already on the books in four states, is an open invitation for the justices to step in. The ACLU is betting the court's answer will match 1980. Supporters of the Texas law are betting the court has moved on.

Andrea Picciotti-Bayer, writing in National Review, captured the view from the right: "The Constitution protects religious liberty; it does not mandate historical amnesia." She added: "Faith is not an intruder in American public life; it's part of our civic DNA."

The ACLU attorney, Heather Weaver, put the other side plainly. "We would like for the Supreme Court to make clear that singling out Scripture for display in public schools is a violation of the First Amendment," she told the AP.

Both sides now wait. But the legal ground has shifted beneath the ACLU's feet since 1980, and the court they are asking to intervene is not the court that ruled in their favor last time. The current Supreme Court's 6-3 conservative majority has already shown a willingness to side with traditional values over progressive legal theories in contentious culture-war cases.

A poster on a wall is not a sermon. If the ACLU cannot tell the difference, the Supreme Court may have to explain it to them.