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 recently 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.
To date, 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 have filed three lawsuits in the Western District of Texas challenging the Ten Commandments displays.
On July 2, 2025, we 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.
This suit – called Rabbi Nathan v. Alamo Heights ISD – 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, 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 appealed the district court’s ruling to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. On January 20, 2026, the Fifth Circuit had an en banc hearing (which means all active judges on the Fifth Circuit participated) in this case (alongside another case of ours challenging a similar law in Louisiana).
Despite the district court’s August 20 ruling, some Texas school districts—that were not initially defendants in our lawsuit—moved forward with displaying the Ten Commandments in classrooms. So, on September 22, 2025, we joined our allies in filing another lawsuit, on behalf of a group of 15 multi-faith and nonreligious Texas families, naming a new group of school districts as defendants. In that case, Cribbs Ringer v. Comal ISD, we won another preliminary injunction. Texas appealed the district court’s decision to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
On December 2, 2025, we joined our allies in filing yet another lawsuit, this time as a class action. The goal of filing this case—called Ashby v. Schertz-Cibolo-Universal City ISD—was to stop all Texas public school districts that were not already involved in active litigation or subject to an injunction from displaying the Ten Commandments. No decision has been issued in this case.
Unfortunately, on April 21, 2026, the en banc Fifth Circuit issued a decision in the Nathan case, concluding S.B. 10 does not violate the Constitutional. We anticipate asking the Supreme Court to reverse the Fifth Circuit’s decision and uphold the religious-freedom rights of children and parents.
