“An appeals court says Texas may require the display of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms…. The Fifth Circuit ruled 9 to 8 [on April 21, 2026] that the Texas law does not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which prohibits the government from establishing a religion and requiring individuals to participate in that religion. They also ruled it doesn't violate the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. That's the idea that all of us have the ability to exercise our own religions or not to exercise religion. That means the state can enforce the law mandating the display of posters of the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom in the state. And the wording has to be from an explicitly Protestant translation of the Ten Commandments.” -Steve Inskeep and Andrew Schneider (NPR law)
The appeal court states that the state of Texas must require the display of the 10 commandments in all public school classrooms. The Fifth circuit made the decision by a slim majority that the law in Texas does not in fact violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment (prohibiting the government from establishing a religion and enforcing all individuals to participate in that religion). They also ruled the law does not violate the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment (which protects citizens’ rights to practice their own religion without government interference). This means the state has the power to enforce the law mandating the display of posters of the Ten Commandments seen in public school.
Previously, on June 20, 2024, Louisiana enacted a similar law. This law was blocked by a lower federal court until February of 2026 when the block was lifted by a federal appeals court. Currently, a Louisiana teacher, Christ Dier filed a motion in the U.S. Supreme Court to stop enforcement of these mandates.
The display of protestant, Christian religious symbols and text has become a central cultural issue recently. Historically, you might empathize with this since many of the founding fathers of this country were certainly protestant and Christian. However, a huge portion of the early settlers of the U.S. came here to avoid religious persecution. This is why the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause are so important. They did not want another Church of England. They realized that already, many very different religious groups made up the fabric of the early United States.
In 2018, a group from the Satanic Temple successfully sued Arkansas when they decided to erect a sculpture of the ten commandments outside of the state Capitol Building. They argued that if lawmakers could place a statue of the ten commandments, they should be able to place a state of a goat headed demon (figure below). The Legislature went into emergency session when it became apparent that they would actually deliver this statue and rescinded the law thus prohibiting public displays of religious icons.
After reading this article, my initial reaction was that seeing the ten commandments in public schools, in theory, should be a beneficial thing. The requirement that the Texas display of the ten commandments must be protestant immediately demonstrated that it creates a slippery slope (figure comparing different versions of thew Ten Commandments below). The first amendment right creates the understanding that the country does not have one overarching religion that everyone is bound to.
Requiring the protestant 10 commandments in public school is not constitutional as it violates our first and 14th amendment right. In conclusion I do disagree with this. The problem can continue if this keeps happening if we don't generalize religion amongst our government. If the government wants to make a law that all public schools need to have a statue of a religious figure we don't all acknowledge within each classroom that would be a problem for most students and parents. How would you like Q’uranic verses?
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