Appeals Court Approves Ten Commandments in Texas Schools: What to Know

The case could end up in the Supreme Court and lead to new rules about how governments deal with religion.

A granite Ten Commandments monument stands on the ground of the Texas Capitol in Austin on May 29, 2025. Eric Gay/AP Photo

A granite Ten Commandments monument stands on the ground of the Texas Capitol in Austin on May 29, 2025. Eric Gay/AP Photo

A federal appeals court has upheld a Texas law requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms.

In a 9–8 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit said in Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District that the law complied with the First Amendment, despite a contrary ruling it issued last year.

The decision, issued at the end of April, raised questions about freedom of religion and how the Supreme Court had ruled on related issues in the past.

If the case reaches the nation’s highest court, the subsequent ruling could change the legal landscape for how governments deal with religion.

Here’s what to know about Texas’s law and broader legal questions around displaying the Ten Commandments:

Appeals Decision

The Texas law requires that public elementary and secondary schools conspicuously display in classrooms an easily readable poster or framed copy of the Ten Commandments with no additional commentary.

A group of parents challenged the law in 2025, alleging that it violated the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution, which forbids the government from favoring one religion over another. They also argued that it violated the free exercise clause, which prohibits the government from infringing on worship and other activities.

The judge eventually blocked Texas’s law while citing court decisions on two other Ten Commandments laws—one from Louisiana and one from Kentucky.

Just before the Texas parents filed their lawsuit in July 2025, the Fifth Circuit had blocked Louisiana’s statute requiring the Ten Commandments in classrooms. In the Louisiana case, a three-judge panel cited the Supreme Court’s 1980 decision in Stone v. Graham.

That decision, which the Fifth Circuit said was binding on lower courts, held that Kentucky’s Ten Commandments law violated the Establishment Clause because it lacked a secular educational purpose. It also affirmed the Supreme Court’s so-called Lemon test, which found that a law related to religion must have a secular purpose to be constitutional.

Because both Texas and Louisiana are within the Fifth Circuit, both are bound by its decisions.

After the Texas lawsuit was filed, a federal judge in the state blocked its law while citing Stone v. Graham and how the Fifth Circuit had ruled against Louisiana’s law. The judge also held that the compulsory displays had a coercive effect, imposing religion on students.

Texas, rather than Louisiana, is likely headed to the Supreme Court because the Fifth Circuit later rejected its own decision on the latter state law. It reheard the Louisiana case en banc, or with the full court. When it did, the Fifth Circuit said that decision was premature, noting that the displays hadn’t been installed in Louisiana classrooms.

The Fifth Circuit’s more recent decision from April also came from the full court rather than a three-judge panel. When the circuit reviewed the law, it disagreed with the judge who blocked the law. The circuit found that the statute did not violate the establishment or free exercise clauses.

It also said the Supreme Court had since discarded the reasoning it used in the Stone v. Graham case.

First Amendment

The judges in the case disagreed on the relevance of the Lemon test, a legal doctrine established by the Supreme Court in Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971). In that case, the Supreme Court held that state funding for private religious schools violated the Establishment Clause.

The high court found that reimbursing religious schools created “excessive entanglement” with religion because government oversight would be needed to ensure taxpayer funds weren’t spent on religious instruction. A law that either advanced or hindered religion was unconstitutional, the justices ruled.

In August 2025, a federal district court held that the Texas law was unconstitutional and temporarily blocked school districts from posting the Ten Commandments, finding that the law “crosses the line from exposure to coercion” and referring to students as a “captive audience.”

The court found that the law improperly favored Christianity, interfered with parents’ right to direct their children’s religious upbringing, and likely violated both the establishment and free exercise clauses.

The judge wrote an unconventional opinion illustrated with historical photographs and a still image from a Hollywood movie. The opinion cited Stone but also quoted the challengers’ argument that the version of the Ten Commandments required was distinctly “Protestant.”

The ruling also recounted past religious strife between Protestant and Catholic Christian churches. The court suggested that if a government “joined hands” with religion, it could impose whatever religious views it favored.

The Fifth Circuit on April 21 reversed on a 9–8 vote, finding that the Texas statute does not violate the establishment or free exercise clauses.

The appeals court held that Stone was no longer good law because “mercifully, the Supreme Court jettisoned Lemon and its offspring some years ago,” in Kennedy v. Bremerton (2022). In that ruling, the high court said a coach’s prayers on the 50-yard line after football games were private in nature and did not violate the establishment clause.

Instead of relying on Lemon, courts should apply a history-based analysis, asking whether the law resembled “a founding-era religious establishment.” Courts need to look at historical sources and scholarship, the appeals court said in Kennedy.

The Texas law “looks nothing like a historical religious establishment,” because it does not tell houses of worship what to believe, how to worship, or whom to employ. It does not punish people who reject the Ten Commandments, impose taxes to support the clergy, or require churches to carry out civic functions, the appeals court said.

“These are the kinds of things ‘establishments of religion’ did at the founding,“ the court said. ”[The Texas law] does none of them.”

A dissenting opinion in the Texas case said that the appeals court should have followed precedent and that Stone had never been formally overturned by the Supreme Court.

Potential Supreme Court Decision

The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups challenging the Texas law said they would appeal the Fifth Circuit decision to the Supreme Court.

“[The ruling violated] fundamental First Amendment principles and binding U.S. Supreme Court authority,” they said in a joint statement. “The First Amendment safeguards the separation of church and state.”

David Super, a professor at Georgetown University Law School, said he “strongly suspects” that the court will accept the case, after the Fifth Circuit had “clearly” been trying to push the high court “to accelerate its transformation of the religion clauses.”

The circuit court “took the highly unusual step of declaring a Supreme Court precedent to have been overturned when the Supreme Court itself had not done so,” he told The Epoch Times.

The Supreme Court may find it “troubling” that the Fifth Circuit is saying legislation is allowed unless “the historic record shows similar legislation being struck down in the founding era,” Super said.

Garrett Bell, associate counsel at First Liberty Institute, was unwilling to predict whether the Supreme Court will take the case, but he said the Lemon test is “dead.”

In Kennedy v. Bremerton, the court held that the establishment clause has to be interpreted by reference to “historical practices and understandings,” Bell told The Epoch Times.

In a previous Fifth Circuit case called Freedom from Religion Foundation v. Mack (2022), that court pronounced the Lemon test dead, saying “its long Night of the Living Dead is now over,” Bell said.

Richard Mast, senior litigation counsel at Liberty Counsel, said that if the Supreme Court wishes to provide legal certainty, it may take up the case, and he said that if it does, it will uphold the Texas law.

“The Lemon test is dead–100 percent,” he told The Epoch Times.