Federal judge blocks Texas’s Ten Commandments Law in Public Schools

Federal judge stopped it on Wednesday Texas The bill requires public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments, the latest in a series of setbacks in the Red State, trying to introduce religious texts into schools.

Judge Fred Biery wrote in an order to grant a preliminary injunction that the Republican-led legislature could not prove the tradition of public schools publishing the Ten Commandments, which he said would require the precedent of the court.

Biery wrote: “This Court held that at the time of its inception and in the history of public education, there was not enough evidence that a broad tradition proved SB 10.”

Biery, the Clinton-appointed man, also said the legislation was not religiously neutral enough to be constitutional. The judge wrote that the bill “provoked theological questions immorally and formally used Christian denominations over others.”

Federal judges block the Ten Commandments of Arkansas in certain areas

Numerous religious sects and families of non-religious plaintiffs filed lawsuits that Texas’s bill violated the First Amendment and imposed religious preferences on their children.

Their lawsuit was ruled in June by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that similar laws in Louisiana were unconstitutional. Biery relies partly on the ruling to justify himself. Judge Arkansas The Ten Commandments in Public Schools this month overturned another bill.

this Supreme Court The idea of ​​public schools publishing religious texts in Stone v. Graham’s classroom in 1980. The case centers on a bill passed by the Kentucky government that requires posters of ten commandments to be hung in public school classrooms, which the High Court found violated the First Amendment because it lacks secular purposes.

Federal Court of Appeal Rules Louisiana Ten Commandments School Law Unconstitutional

U.S. Supreme Court introduced at dusk in Washington, DC on June 28, 2023 (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Biery observed that while language in Texas legislation does not include any religious purposes, legislators have voiced their intentions. The judge wrote several quotes from state legislators, including the bill’s chief sponsor in the Senate.

“We want every child, [kindergarten] Every day, every day in every classroom, they would sit on the wall and watch…these words…because we want them to know those words of God, God’s rule is that they see them in the classroom every day in public education,” state Sen. Phil King Republicansexplain.

Many other statements cited by the judge indicated that lawmakers had major religious goals when passing the bill, Berry said.

Wednesday, June 25, 2025, the Ten Commandments Monument at the Austin Capitol. (Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman via Getty Images)

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The authors of the bill wrote in a statement to the legislation that they hope to display religious directives on school walls because they are an important part of history.

“Now that the legal landscape has changed, it’s time for Texas to pass SB 10 and restore the history and traditions of our state and our country’s Ten Commandments,” lawmakers said.