The Texas House of Representatives and Senate passed Senate Bill 10 on May 25 and May 28, respectively, a bill that would require public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments, serving as the newest development in a trend towards the unification of religion and public education. This isn’t the first time the separation of government and religion has been challenged.
Whiteboards, desks, and writing utensils are integral to many K-12 classrooms across the United States. Thanks to a bill being considered by the Texas state Senate, the Bible’s Ten Commandments may join that list for Texas students starting the 2025-2026 school year.
If passed, Senate Bill 10 would require all public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments on a poster funded by private donations. The Senate first voted on the bill in March, and the Texas House of Representatives passed an amended version on Sunday, May 25, with a 82-46 vote. With a 28-3 vote on May 28, the Texas Senate overwhelmingly passed the amended bill as well, sending it to the governor’s desk. Though the bill is pending his approval, Texas Governor Greg Abbott has already pledged his intention to “make it law.”
“By placing the Ten Commandments in our public school classrooms, we ensure our students receive the same foundational moral compass as our state and country’s forefathers,” Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick issued in a statement following the bill’s initial passage by the Senate in March.
Despite the bill’s strong Republican support and sparse Democrat support, it has drawn public criticism for blurring the line regarding the role of religion in public education, drawing upon the conservative push for integration of church and state.
“I think this bill is not only unconstitutional [and] un-American, I also think it’s deeply un-Christian because, you know, we as believers should be bringing policies that seek to feed the hungry, heal the sick, welcome the stranger, serve the poor—but instead of working on those policies, we’re trying to force teachers to put up a poster,” said Texas State Representative James Talarcio, who formerly served as a public school teacher, in an interview with Houston Public Media.
Christianity in the Classroom
This isn’t the first time that a state government has attempted to mandate the presence of religious texts in the classroom. Fifteen other states have pursued similar legislation regarding the Ten Commandments, and Louisiana and Arkansas have done so successfully. Supporters claim that Christianity is crucial to America’s historical roots and therefore should play a greater part in the education system.
However, similar legislation has faced both public scrutiny and legal challenges. A federal judge struck down a Louisiana law requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms. The American Civil Liberties Union has already announced its intention to sue the state of Texas over Senate Bill 10, labeling it “blatantly unconstitutional” and “religiously coercive.”
The federal government has also displayed tensions when it comes to religion’s role in the classroom, with the Supreme Court blocking a bid by Oklahoma to direct state funds to a religious charter school in a tie vote.
The First Amendment: Balancing Religious Liberty With Public Secularism
The core debate on religion’s place in public learning stems from the Constitution itself. While the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause codifies the right to practice religion freely, the Establishment Clause also lays out boundaries regarding the relationship between church and state, specifically restricting the government’s ability to endorse or favor any one religion through legislation or executive action.
A series of Supreme Court cases in the 1960s put this principle to the test in the classroom. In Engel v. Vitale (1962), the Supreme Court ruled that school-sponsored prayer violated the Establishment Clause. Later cases, such as School District of Abington Township, Pennsylvania v. Schempp (1963) and Epperson v. Arkansas (1968), further narrowed the extent to which schools could teach religious material.
However, it was Supreme Court case Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971) that first established strict guidelines regarding the relationship between religion and public education. In their ruling, the Court devised the “Lemon test,” which stipulated that an educational policy involving religion is constitutional under the following conditions: its primary purpose is secular, it does not further nor hinder religion and religion and government do not become “excessively entangled.”
Later cases, most notably Stone v. Graham (1980), applied the Lemon test to policies in schools. As Texas State Senator Phil King, the lead writer of Senate Bill 10, reflected, it was this ruling that set the stage for several decades’ worth of legal precedent regarding the role of religious texts in public classrooms—and this ruling that is now being challenged.
“Members, if you grew up in a public school in Texas prior to 1980, you quite likely saw copies of the Ten Commandments because of their moral code, their place in history and their place in American and western law…Again, I said 1980, when a case called Stone v. Graham in Kentucky—in applying what was called the Lemon test for religious liberties—required that the Ten Commandments be taken down in schools all across the United States,” King said in a speech on the Senate floor.
Turning Tides: Changes in Precedent
Though Stone v. Graham effectively prevented states from requiring public schools to display religious texts in classrooms for over four decades, the 2022 Supreme Court case Kennedy v. Bremerton School District prompted a shift in the relationship between religion and public education. In examining a case involving a public school employee’s free exercise of religion, the Supreme Court chose to abandon the principles of the Lemon test. Without guidelines to determine whether or not religion and government have become “excessively entangled” in schools, many states have taken the opportunity to pursue measures that previously may have violated the test’s strict guidelines surrounding the separation of church and state in the classroom.
This is the situation that Texas finds itself in now. With Texas’ government poised to pass Senate Bill 10 and advocacy groups just as prepared to challenge it in court, the U.S. judicial system is at an pivotal crossroads regarding its stance on the role of religion in the classroom. The court’s verdict could determine whether the U.S.’s leniency towards the intersection of church and education is a temporary deviation from precedent or a long-standing trend.