Construction workers walk past a monument with the Ten Commandments outside the Texas Capitol in Austin last year.
Paul Weber/AP
hide caption
toggle caption
Paul Weber/AP
Key Texas legislators say they intend to pass a law requiring public schools to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms. The move would add some big-state momentum to a trend started by Louisiana last year with a law that is blocked in court but has other states looking at similar proposals.
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican, signaled the move last year after Louisiana’s law passed. He said Texas should have been the first in the nation to adopt it and he swore the state would in 2025. He named it as one of the leading conservative priorities. The state’s legislative session began this month and is scheduled to end in June.
A federal judge in Louisiana called that state’s version of the law “overtly religious” and unconstitutional when blocking it in November. The case is being appealed and Republican attorneys general from 18 states have joined to support it.
Supporters say history is at stake
As in other states, Texas proponents argue that the commandments are a historical document.
“To be honest, if you don’t know the Ten Commandments, you don’t really know the basis for much of American history and law. It played such a role in our founding and among our founders,” said state Sen. Phil King, a Republican from outside of Fort Worth who will help to lead the Texas effort. “In fact, few documents have had a bigger impact on not just the United States but on Western civilization in general than the Ten Commandments.”
Republican state Sen. Brandon Creighton, representing a district near Houston, heads the education committee and he too wants the Ten Commandments in every classroom.
“We can’t hold our society back or hamstring the teaching of national pride and basic principles and morality because of someone, some way, somehow being offended,” Creighton said in an interview, adding that the commandments are “principles that simply encourage people not to tell a lie to one another or to dishonor your mother or father.”
The Legislature is also poised to consider several other bills that would introduce religious displays or practices into government settings. They include measures to require a nativity scene on the Texas Capitol grounds each December and to require schools to allow time for prayer or Bible study.
Following Louisiana last year, lawmakers in other states, including North and South Dakota, Oklahoma and Tennessee have introduced Ten Commandments bills for their legislatures this year. The trend started after the door was opened by a 2022 Supreme Court ruling about a Washington state high school football coach who prayed on the field.
Since then, states have been pushing the edges on what Robert Tuttle, law professor at Washington, DC’s George Washington University, says has been the norm on church and state.
“What we’re seeing is an effort to extend the range of religious dominance – not religious freedom but religious dominance – in governmental space. And it’s very hard to square with long standing traditions of separation,” Tuttle said.
Opponents say a Ten Commandments law would impose religion
One of the people opposing the trend in Texas is state Rep. James Talarico, a Democrat representing a district in the Austin suburbs. Talarico, currently a seminary student, used to teach in San Antonio public schools.
“On my first day in office, I put my hand on the Bible, and I swore an oath to the Constitution, not the other way around,” Talarico said. “I think if Jesus read some of these bills, he would remind us to treat Jewish students, Muslim students, Buddhist students, Hindu students, atheist students as ourselves, and that’s not what this legislation does.”
In 2023, a Ten Commandments bill passed the Texas Senate, but died in the House thanks in part to some Republicans who agreed with Talarico. But the Texas House shifted further to the right in the last election. Steven T. Collis, who teaches religion law at the University of Texas at Austin, outlined the competing views.
“Those who are opposed to the Ten Commandments in schools feel like this is an effort to inject Christianity into public schools,” Collis said. “Those who are arguing for posting the Ten Commandments would argue the idea that public schools can be neutral is a myth, and what public schools are actually doing is secularizing children and removing from their education any notion that Christianity played a role in the development of Western culture.”
While the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans considers the Louisiana law, Texas supporters say they’re determined to push forward.
“I think the Fifth Circuit will strongly rule in favor of Louisiana and ultimately in favor of what Texas is trying to do,” King said.
