The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit has handed down a decision that could reshape the legal landscape for religious symbols in public education, upholding a Texas law that requires public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments. The ruling in Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District is not just a procedural victory for Texas; it represents a major doctrinal shift in how lower courts must analyze Establishment Clause challenges following the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District. By discarding the old Lemon test in favor of a historical practices analysis, the 5th Circuit has opened the door for a new generation of religious displays in public schools—and the Supreme Court will likely be asked to decide whether that door remains open.
How the 5th Circuit Applied the Supreme Court’s New Historical Test
The central legal question in the case turned on which test the court should use to evaluate the constitutionality of Texas Senate Bill 10, enacted in June 2025. The law requires that every public elementary and secondary school classroom display a “durable poster or framed copy of the Ten Commandments” measuring at least 16×20 inches, placed in a conspicuous location with only the text of the Ten Commandments and nothing else. Schools may accept privately donated displays or purchase compliant ones with district funds.
With Lemon extracted, there is nothing left of Stone.
Under the old framework established in Lemon v. Kurtzman, courts would have asked whether the law had a secular purpose, whether its primary effect advanced religion, and whether it created excessive government entanglement with religion. That test had been the standard for five decades until the Supreme Court explicitly abandoned it in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, replacing it with a test grounded in “historical practices and understandings.” The 5th Circuit followed that directive, concluding that the Lemon test no longer controls Establishment Clause analysis and that the 1980 precedent of Stone v. Graham, which struck down a similar Kentucky law under Lemon, is no longer binding.
“With Lemon extracted, there is nothing left of Stone,” the 5th Circuit wrote, effectively clearing the path for Texas’s law to stand.
What the Law Actually Requires and What It Does Not
The 5th Circuit’s holding rested heavily on the specific design and implementation of S.B. 10. The court found that the law punishes no one who rejects the Ten Commandments, requires no religious exercise or observance, and neither catechizes students nor encourages them to adopt the religious teachings of the text. The posters are passive displays, accompanied by no curriculum, no recitation requirement, and no penalty for disbelief.
While acknowledging that plaintiffs have sincere religious disagreements with the content of the Ten Commandments, the court reasoned that “that does not transform the poster into a summons to prayer.” This distinction between a passive acknowledgment and an active religious exercise became a critical pillar of the decision.
The Key Question: Can a Religious Text Have a Nonreligious Meaning?
The most significant analytical move in the 5th Circuit’s opinion is its treatment of the Ten Commandments as a text that carries both religious and secular meanings. The court rejected the argument that the religious origins of the Ten Commandments automatically render them unconstitutional in a public school setting, especially one where attendance is compulsory.
The Supreme Court had already laid the groundwork for this reasoning in its 2019 decision American Legion v. American Atheist Association</em. In that case, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that "as time goes by, the purposes associated with an established monument, symbol, or practice often multiply. Take the example of Ten Commandments monuments. For believing Jews and Christis, the Ten Commandments are the word of God handed down to Moses on Mount Sinai, but the image of the Ten Commandments has also been used to convey other meanings. They have historical significance as one of the foundations of our legal system, and for largely that reason, they are depicted in the mable frieze in our courtroom and in other prominent public buildings in our Nation's capital."
This dual-meaning principle is central to the Texas case. The 5th Circuit held that S.B. 10 does not promote religion but rather acknowledges the foundational role of the Ten Commandments in American law. The display is not an act of coerced worship but a recognition of historical influence similar to the Supreme Court’s own courtroom decoration, which includes a carved figure of Moses holding the Ten Commandments and brass lattices screens filled with small imprints of the text.
Chief Justice John Marshall’s Supreme Courtroom has displayed the Ten Commandments since 1935, the 5th Circuit noted, not to advance faith but to honor the roots of Western legal tradition.
Text of the Ten Commandments as Law: Historical Consensus
The 5th Circuit’s reasoning draws on a long line of historical sources that treat the Ten Commandments as a civil and legal document as well as a religious one. John Quincy Adams wrote to his son that “the law given from Sinai was a civil and municipal as well as a moral and religious code; it contained many statutes adapted to that time only, but many others were of universal application—laws essential to the existence of men in society, and most of which have been enacted by every nation which ever professed any code of laws.”
William Blackstone, the foundational commentator on English common law, wrote in his Commentaries on the Laws of England that “all human laws” depend on “natural law and divine law,” defining divine law as precepts “found only in the holy scriptures.” He gave the example of murder, which he said “is expressly forbidden by the divine.”
In 1997, both chambers of the U.S. Congress passed concurrent resolutions stating that “the Ten Commandments have had a significant impact on the development of the fundamental legal principles of Western Civilization.” Even during oral argument in the American Legion case, Monica Miller, attorney for the American Humanist Association challenging the World War I cross memorial, conceded that “the Ten Commandments is basically shorthand for law itself” because of its “dual secular meaning.”
Why the Texas Law Does Not Create Coercion
The coercion argument is the strongest weapon for opponents of the law. Public school students are required by state law to attend, and the argument holds that placing a religious text in front of impressionable youth at least implicitly coerces them into religious participation. The 5th Circuit found several flaws in this reasoning, but the most fundamental is its assumption that the Ten Commandments can only have a single meaning—and that meaning is always religious.
The court pointed to common classroom practices that would be impossible if every material with religious origins were removed. A teacher hanging a poster of Abraham Lincoln’s “house divided against itself cannot stand” speech would be displaying a direct quotation of Jesus from Mark 3:25. A Civil War unit featuring the lyrics of the Battle Hymn of the Republic would include the line “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord,” originally a Christian hymn. Teaching the antislavery speeches of Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from the Birmingham Jail, Renaissance art, African-American spirituals, or Handel’s Messiah would all be constitutionally suspect under the strictest reading of the coercion argument.
Similarly, the Supreme Court in the American Legion case noted the ubiquity of place names with religious origins: Bethlehem, Pennsylvania; Las Cruces, New Mexico; Providence, Rhode Island; Corpus Christi, Texas. None of these names violates the Establish Clause, the court held—and to argue otherwise, the 5th Circuit observed, would require school districts like St. Paul, Minnesota, to sandblast their names from schoolhouse walls.
What the Case Means for the Future of Religious Displays in Schools
The 5th Circuit’s decision is not the final word. Petitions for certiorari to the Supreme Court are expected, and the Louisiana case Dier v. Landry involving a similar law is also likely to reach the justices. The Supreme Court may choose to take up one or both cases to settle the post-Kennedy standards for religious displays in public education.
If the Court upholds the 5th Circuit’s reasoning, it would effectively end the era in which the religious origins of a display are sufficient to invalidate it under the Establish Clause. The controlling question would become whether the government action ressembles a founding-era religious establishment—that is, whether it coerces religious participation, establishes a state church, or punishes dissent. A passive display with secular meaning, even if it also carries religious significance, would survive scrutiny.
That outcome would have implications well beyond Texas. States with similar proposals, including Louisiana, Oklahoma, and others, would see their laws validated. Schools might begin to display the Ten Commandments alongside other foundational legal documents such as the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution, framing them as part of a broader historical and legal education rather than as sectarian religious instruction.
What Opponents of the Law Still Argue
The plaintiffs in Nathan argue that the Ten Commandments contain specific theological tenets—such as the command to have no other gods before the one God and the prohibition of graven images—that are uniquely Judeo-Christian and cannot be reduced to secular legal principles. They maintain that the “dual meaning” argument is a way of smuggling sectarian belief into the classroom under the cover of historical recognition, and that vulnerable students who do not share that faith may feel like outsiders in their own schools.
The 5th Circuit’s resonse was that a Hindu student, for example, could read the Ten Commandments and conclude that the majority of people in the nation believe in monotheism, while also recognizing that the Constitution prohibits any religious test for public office, forbids a state church, and protects everyons right to freedom of speech, belief, and conscience. That, the court held, is not coercion—it is acknowledgment of a fact about the nation’history.
What is ultimately at stake is whether the Establish Clause requires public schools to erase all references to the religious foundations of the legal system or whether it permits them to acknowledge those foundations without endorsing them. The 5th Circuit has chosen the latter path, and it fall to the Supreme Court to decide whether that path remain open.
- What did the 5th Circuit rule regarding Texas' Ten Commandments law?The 5th Circuit upheld Texas Senate Bill 10, which requires public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments.
- Why did the court discard the Lemon test?The Supreme Court abandoned the Lemon test in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, replacing it with a historical practices analysis.
- Can a religious text have a nonreligious meaning according to the court?Yes, the court held that the Ten Commandments carry both religious and secular meanings, allowing their passive display in schools.
