Notre Dame religious liberty scholars urge Supreme Court to strike down Texas Ten Commandments law

The Texas law “forces state-sponsored religious instruction” on public school students, the filing says.

Religious liberty scholars at the University of Notre Dame are urging the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down a Texas law that requires the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public schools.

Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed the law in June 2025. The measure ordered that a “durable poster or framed copy of the Ten Commandments” be hung in each Texas public elementary or secondary school classroom.

The law has been subject to legal challenges since its passage. U.S. District Judge Fred Biery blocked the law in August 2025, but the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals later upheld the law, finding that it does not violate the First Amendment.

In an amicus filing on Sept. 28, scholars with the Lindsay & Matt Moroun Religious Liberty Clinic at the Notre Dame Law School urged the Supreme Court to take up the case, arguing that the high court can provide “urgently needed guidance” regarding the extent of the establishment clause in the First Amendment.

The Texas law “forces state-sponsored religious instruction on children” and “strikes at the heart of the Constitution’s protections” while going against Supreme Court precedent, the filing says.

The appeals court ruling “misstates the history underpinning the First Amendment, defies [Supreme Court] cases, and imperils religious freedom,” the brief argues.

The placement of the Ten Commandments per the state’s rule “guarantees” that students will be effectively coerced into religious instruction, it says.

The purpose of the law is to “teach government-approved religious truth,” the scholars say, in violation of the Constitution and U.S. precedent.

The Supreme Court has ruled on public displays of the Ten Commandments in multiple cases. In 2005 it held that a display at the Texas Capitol was constitutional, though in the same year it struck down Ten Commandments displays at multiple Kentucky courthouses.

In 2024, meanwhile, a federal judge blocked a Louisiana law requiring Ten Commandments displays in public school classrooms, but the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals later reversed the ruling, finding that Supreme Court precedent left the constitutional question unresolved.