The argument over whether a Bible passage should be displayed in public school classrooms was never intended to be an attack on Protestant Christians, civil rights and faith leaders said Tuesday. It’s simply about protecting the constitutional rights of people of all faiths and allowing religious instruction to occur in the home, they said.
The entire 17-member federal Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments on Tuesday on the Texas case Rabbi Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District and a similar one out of Louisiana.
The ACLU, along with multifaith leaders and parents, sued 11 school districts, including some in the Houston area, for displaying Ten Commandments posters in public school classrooms in accordance with a new state law. Fourteen more districts were later added to the Rabbi Nathan suit.
In August 2025, a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction blocking the original 11 school districts named in the suit from displaying the posters, ruling that Senate Bill 10 is unconstitutional and “crosses the line from exposure to coercion.”
A second federal judge also found SB 10 to be unconstitutional and issued a preliminary injunction ordering the 14 additional school districts to take down the posters and bar them from putting up new ones. The state appealed that case to the Fifth Circuit but a hearing date has not been scheduled. Only the original Rabbi Nathan case was discussed Tuesday, along with the Louisiana lawsuit.
A separate class action suit filed in December named 16 Texas school districts in a bid to block the displays. That case is pending before a district court.
Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Galveston, Round Rock and Leander ISDs for refusing to comply with the legislation that was signed into law in June 2025 and became effective in September.
Jonathan Youngwood, a partner with Simpson Thatcher & Bartlett LLP, argued the case in court Tuesday as pro bono counsel for the plaintiffs. He told the Houston Press after the hearing that a ruling could take four to six months but he was encouraged by the questions asked and the opportunity to discuss the case with federal judges alongside lawyers in the Louisiana suit, Rev. Roake v. Brumley.
“Texas and Louisiana have enacted laws that require the children of our clients to be exposed to coercive scripture every single day in every single subject, regardless of whether it could. in any way, remotely tie to historical issues or history of religion or not,” he said. “It was a lively bench as the Fifth Circuit tends to be. There were questions to both sides, many vigorous, many pointed, and we were pleased that the court gave us time to argue it. We were pleased that they were attentive, and we look forward to the due course of their decision.”
Tuesday’s hearing, held in New Orleans, was the second time the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has taken up the Louisiana matter. A three-judge panel ruled in June 2025 that Louisiana’s House Bill 71 is “plainly unconstitutional” under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The full court vacated that decision in October and agreed to rehear the case with all 17 judges present.
Audio of Tuesday’s oral arguments was livestreamed and is archived for those who want to listen. It’s challenging at times to tell who is speaking but several judges repeatedly cited previous Supreme Court rulings and attempted to determine why it is acceptable to require children to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, which references “one nation under God,” and read historical speeches that contain Biblical references but not post the Ten Commandments.
Chief among the plaintiffs’ arguments was that the Ten Commandments law requires the text to be posted in every classroom, which implies coercion or indoctrination, and the text involves “commandments,” or laws, which may be contradictory to what a child has been taught by their parents.
Jewish faith leaders who recognize the Ten Commandments as being part of their Torah have objected to the New King James Bible translation that is being posted in classrooms because it does not acknowledge “the special covenant between the God of Israel and Jews,” Judge Stephen Higginson said during Tuesday’s hearing.
“Can you think of one rabbinical authority that accepts the Protestant translation over the Torah?” Higginson asked.
A defense attorney responded that he didn’t want to “get wrapped around the wheel” in a question of whether the government is favoring one religion over another because that’s not the legal argument before the court; the matter is about constitutionality, the lawyer said.
Another justice questioned where the line is drawn on when a teacher can ask students to read the Ten Commandments in class each morning, answer questions about the text or “proselytize” in the classroom.
The New York Times reported Monday that some Texas teachers have quit their jobs rather than display the Ten Commandments. Others have posted displays of multiple religious faiths alongside the Christian scripture, and some, like the ones Paxton sued, have refused to comply with the law, citing the temporary injunctions approved by federal judges. The Times article noted the confusion among Texas school districts: “Do they follow the court rulings or Mr. Paxton’s mandate?”
The Fifth Circuit is generally considered the most conservative appellate court in the nation, and supporters of the Ten Commandments mandate have said they are confident the law will be upheld. They have pointed to a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that a high school football coach in Washington state could legally pray with his team at the 50-yard line after games.
But that argument didn’t appear to sway at least one of the justices at Tuesday’s hearing.
“A football coach [praying] after a game is a lot different from every hour of every day, all year, of God text, scripture text, facing students,” a judge said.
Another justice pointed out that in addition to the First Amendment prohibiting preference of a particular scriptural text, “the government can never disparage a religion.”
“A Jewish child, a Buddhist child, a Hindu child who believes in a multitude of deities, how could they possibly not feel confronted by a command that says there is only one God?” the judge said.
ACLU Louisiana Executive Director Alanah Odoms said in a press conference after the hearing that she, too, was encouraged by the dialogue in the courtroom.
“Today’s arguments made one thing unmistakably clear: this case is not about history, charity or faith,” she said. “It’s about government power and whether the state can use public schools to impose one religious doctrine on our children. Today the court was not just weighing a statute. It was weighing what kind of state we choose to be and how we teach ourselves and our children to live together in love, dignity and freedom.”
Support for the Ten Commandments displays remains intact, although the proponents did not issue any press releases after Tuesday’s hearing. A coalition of church groups and Texas conservatives formed the coalition Restore American Schools, which tracks which districts are not affected by the temporary injunction and therefore can accept donated posters for display. Residents can make monetary donations for posters to be delivered to the eligible Texas school districts.
Republican Sen. Mayes Middleton, who is running for attorney general, donated about 450 posters to Galveston ISD but the school board voted to block the displays, prompting Paxton’s lawsuit. Galveston administrators have said the posters are in a district warehouse.
Critics of the Ten Commandments law say the text — which talks about adultery and murder — isn’t appropriate for children and will likely raise questions that teachers should not be in the position of answering.
Rabbi Mara Nathan said after Tuesday’s hearing that no single faith should be canonized as more holy than others.
“Yet, Texas legislators are imposing the Ten Commandments on public-school children,” she said. “Though they are a sacred text to me and many others, the Ten Commandments has no place on the walls of public-school classrooms. Children’s religious beliefs should be instilled by parents and faith communities, not politicians and public schools.”
Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the effort to push Ten Commandments laws is backed by a Christian nationalist political agenda rooted in a quest for power and “the lie that America is intended to be a Christian nation.”
She noted that many of the plaintiffs in the case are Christians, which is different from Christian nationalism, and they support the separation of church and state and the opportunity for families to decide when and how children engage with religion.
Laser also pointed out that the children in the courtroom on Tuesday were “on our side.” She said it’s “ludicrous” that some people believe it’s not coercive to post the Ten Commandments in every classroom.
“Don’t the judges remember being kids?” she said. “When you looked up at those walls of your public school classroom, you felt like that was truth, what was posted.”
This article appears in Private: Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2026.