Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District

In 2025, Texas lawmakers enacted S.B. 10, which requires all public elementary and secondary schools to display a Protestant version of the Ten Commandments selected by the legislature. As mandated by the law, the displays must be at least 16 by 20 inches in size and must be hung in a “conspicuous place” in each classroom. The Ten Commandments must be written largely enough that students can see them no matter where they are seated. In other words, the displays are designed to be unavoidable for students. From kindergarten through twelfth grade, the government will impose this religious doctrine on children for nearly every hour they are in public school.

A group of Texas families with children in public schools across the state filed a federal lawsuit challenging S.B. 10 shortly after it was signed into law. The families suing in Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District are Jewish, Christian, Unitarian Universalist, Hindu, and nonreligious; some families include parents who are rabbis, ministers, or other clergy. The families allege that forcing the Ten Commandments on their children in every classroom will pressure the children to conform to the state’s favored religious beliefs and interfere with parents’ right to guide their children’s religious instruction.

In their lawsuit, the parents sought an injunction blocking the scriptural displays from going up in their children’s school districts — and they won at the district court. In its decision, the district court ruled that the Ten Commandments law likely violates both the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment.

Nearly 70 years of Supreme Court precedent support the district court’s ruling, including a milestone 1980 Supreme Court decision in a lawsuit brought by the ACLU that struck down a similar Kentucky law.

Nevertheless, the en banc U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed the district court in April 2026. The appellate court upheld S.B. 10 and cleared the way for the Ten Commandments to be posted in the plaintiff-children’s classrooms. Together with the families in a similar lawsuit challenging S.B. 10, Cribbs Ringer v. Comal Independent School District, the families in Nathan filed a petition for a writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court in August 2026. They have asked the Court to hear both cases, reverse the appellate court’s rulings, and protect their families’ religious freedom.