The Supreme Court is weighing whether to review a full-panel decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit that upheld the Texas Ten Commandments law, as well as a related case from Louisiana. The justices are not required to hear the dispute, but the ruling below applied the governing history-based approach to the establishment clause and, according to the 5th Circuit’s analysis, reached the correct result that the statute is constitutional. Central to that decision is the conclusion that a text with religious roots can accrue a separate, nonreligious meaning over time that public schools may acknowledge through passive classroom displays. In this view, Texas’ decision to place the Ten Commandments in classrooms recognizes their role in American legal history rather than promoting religion.
Supreme Court Ten Commandments case and the establishment clause
In 2022, the Supreme Court in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District set aside the Lemon test, a framework from 1971’s Lemon v. Kurtzman that examined secular purpose, primary effect, and excessive entanglement to assess establishment clause claims. Kennedy replaced that approach with an originalist inquiry that looks to historical practices and understandings of religious establishments at the founding.
The 5th Circuit applied that test to S.B. 10, a Texas measure enacted in June 2025 requiring public elementary and secondary schools to display in each classroom a durable poster or framed copy of the Ten Commandments. The display must measure at least 16 by 20 inches, be easily readable, appear in a conspicuous place, and contain only the text of the Ten Commandments. Schools may accept qualifying donated displays or purchase them with district funds.
Parents from diverse religious backgrounds quickly sued several Texas school districts, alleging S.B. 10 violates the First Amendment’s establishment clause and free exercise clause. In Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District, the 5th Circuit sitting en banc upheld the law. The court concluded S.B. 10 does not violate the establishment clause because it punishes no one who disagrees with the Ten Commandments, requires no religious exercise, and neither instructs students in nor urges adoption of the commandments. While acknowledging the plaintiffs’ sincere religious objections, the court said that does not convert a passive poster into a directive to pray.
In reaching that outcome, the 5th Circuit considered Stone v. Graham, a 1980 Supreme Court decision that struck down a Kentucky statute requiring the Ten Commandments in public schools. Because Stone relied on Lemon, the 5th Circuit followed Kennedy’s instruction that Lemon and its progeny are no longer controlling. With Lemon removed, the court reasoned, Stone does not dictate the result.
The Nathan opinion reflects Kennedy’s mandate to reference historical practices and understandings so that interpretation of the establishment clause aligns with the founding-era view. The inquiry, the 5th Circuit explained, is whether the law resembles a founding-era religious establishment, which at its core involved legal coercion to participate in a particular church.
Challengers argue that the Ten Commandments’ religious origin renders their display in compulsory public education settings unconstitutional, amounting to implicit coercion. The 5th Circuit identified several flaws in that theory, and a central response is that the Ten Commandments can carry both religious and nonreligious meanings. The Supreme Court has acknowledged that certain religious symbols can acquire additional, secular significance.
In 2019’s American Legion v. American Humanist Association, the court upheld a World War I memorial in the shape of a cross in Maryland. While a cross has an undeniably religious origin, the court, in an opinion by Justice Samuel Alito, recognized that over time such a symbol also came to mark war dead and honor sacrifice. The mothers who established the memorial did so to commemorate local service members who died in the war, not to advance Christianity.
To illustrate, the court pointed to the Ten Commandments as a symbol with layered meaning: for believers, a sacred text, and for the broader public, a historical touchstone associated with the development of law. The court noted that the Ten Commandments appear in its own courtroom frieze and in other federal buildings, not to endorse religion but to acknowledge legal history.
Thinkers and institutions have long described the Ten Commandments as influential in the legal tradition. John Quincy Adams wrote that the law from Sinai included principles of universal application essential to civil society. William Blackstone described human laws as grounded in natural and divine law, citing the prohibition on murder as an example expressly commanded by the divine. In 1997, both chambers of Congress approved concurrent resolutions recognizing the Ten Commandments’ impact on Western legal principles. During American Legion oral argument, counsel for challengers agreed the Ten Commandments can serve as shorthand for law because of a dual secular meaning.
Opponents of the classroom displays often treat the religious content as dispositive, overlooking the additional historical message. Yet public schools frequently teach materials with religious origins in secular contexts. A Civil War unit might feature Abraham Lincoln’s “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” a line drawn from the New Testament, or the lyrics of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, which began as a Christian hymn. Removing such materials solely because of origin would be an overbroad reading of the First Amendment.
The same question arises across curricula, from Frederick Douglass’s anti-slavery speeches and Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail to Renaissance art, spirituals, or Handel’s Messiah. Even common ethical maxims found in classrooms echo biblical language. A categorical rule against materials with religious roots would upend ordinary instruction.
The Supreme Court has also cited place names like Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Las Cruces, New Mexico, Providence, Rhode Island, and Corpus Christi, Texas, as examples of terms with religious origins that now carry civic meaning. No one views the use of those names by public entities as an establishment of religion. By the same reasoning, acknowledging the school district’s name or heritage would not violate the First Amendment, even if it reflects religious language.
Some object that the Ten Commandments include directives specific to Jewish and Christian belief, such as prohibitions on other gods or graven images. That does not negate the broader historical role of the commandments in shaping the Western legal tradition. Texas also structured its law to preclude proselytizing or coercion and to ensure no penalty for dissent. A student from a minority faith, for example, might view the display as a window into the beliefs prevalent at the founding and the constitutional safeguards that protect pluralism, including bans on religious tests, the absence of an official state church, and protections for speech, belief, and conscience.
All told, passive displays with religious origins have not historically been treated as establishment clause violations, particularly when they convey a second, nonreligious meaning. The same analysis, the 5th Circuit concluded, supports the validity of S.B. 10.
The Supreme Court’s evolving establishment clause jurisprudence has reshaped debates over the limits of government power, echoing broader concerns about how the separation of powers shifted over two decades in other constitutional contexts. Those developments continue to draw close attention from legal scholars and practitioners alike.
For official case details, readers can consult the Supreme Court docket and opinions page. Background on congressional actions and resolutions referenced in these debates is also available from the U.S. Congress.