Appeals Courts Hands Conservatives Victory Allowing Texas To Require Ten Commandments Posted In Classrooms

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton referred to the ruling as “a major victory for Texas and our moral values.”

Thanks to a U.S. appeals court’s April 21 ruling, Texas can now require the Ten Commandments to be posted in classrooms, handing a victory to conservatives seeking to incorporate more religion into schools, CNN reports.

The appeals court’s ruling reverses a district court’s judgment that blocked school districts from displaying the commandments. Close to two dozen school districts were barred from posting them starting Sept. 1, amid federal judges’ injunctions issued after Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed a 2025 law mandating religious displays. Despite pushback from families of various faiths, the commandments went up at the start of the school year.

The decision held that Texas’s law did not violate the First Amendment, which protects religious freedom and prohibits the government from establishing a religion. The law “does not tell churches or synagogues or mosques what to believe or how to worship or whom to employ as priests, rabbis, or imams,” the ruling says.

“No child is made to recite the Commandments, believe them, or affirm their divine origin.”

After the law passed, conservative legal groups and churches raised funds to distribute posters to districts across the state. Kelly Shackelford, chief executive of First Liberty Institute, a Christian legal organization, called the Ten Commandments vital to the nation’s history.

“Banning them from schools because they are religious is not justified by the Constitution and would undermine a comprehensive education for America’s students,” Shackelford said in a statement, according to The New York Times.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton referred to the ruling as “a major victory for Texas and our moral values.” “The Ten Commandments have had a profound impact on our nation, and it’s important that students learn from them every single day,” Paxton said.

The Lone Star state isn’t the only state to pass such legislation; Arkansas, Louisiana, and Alabama have passed similar laws, along with court challenges. But not everyone is celebrating the move.

Lena Lee, a high school English teacher in Keller, Texas, said the ruling is “devastating” as she has hung more spiritually themed posters from a multitude of faiths in defiance of the law—something she says she will continue to do. “Students in Texas are being unjustly used as pawns in this game for conservatism,” she said.

“Schools should not be a battleground for conservatives to push their agenda.”

Her thoughts are supported by organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union, which said the ruling “goes against fundamental First Amendment principles and binding U.S. Supreme Court authority.”

“The First Amendment safeguards the separation of church and state and the freedom of families to choose how, when and if to provide their children with religious instruction,” they said.

“This decision tramples those rights.”