The Ten Commandments go back to court

Inside a New Orleans federal courthouse Tuesday, 17 black-robed circuit judges assembled to consider the constitutionality of Louisiana and Texas laws that require schools to post the Ten Commandments in classrooms.

The court consolidated the two lawsuits since their minor differences probably won’t matter in settling the main issue: Does requiring schools to post the Ten Commandments violate the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution? So far, lower courts have said yes. The laws have sparked intense support and opposition since legislators passed them in 2024 and 2025, and the appeals court’s decision could shape the legal response to similar efforts in other states.

In November 2024, a federal judge put Louisiana’s law on hold after a multi-faith coalition of parents challenged it. The decision cited the establishment clause, which bars governments from promoting or endorsing a religion. A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld that ruling last June. But then a majority of the circuit judges voted to rehear the case.

In Texas, a federal judge last August blocked the state’s Ten Commandments law from taking effect in 11 school districts due to a lawsuit from a group of families represented by a coalition of civil rights organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton wasted no time in asking the full appeals court to overturn the ruling—skipping over the usual appeal to a three-judge panel.

Louisiana’s attorneys point to a long tradition of governments posting the Ten Commandments in public places and their importance in our legal tradition. In their brief, they argued the moral maxims “undergird longstanding prohibitions on murder, theft, perjury, and the like.” But they also noted that the commandments “substantiate the fundamental claim in one of our founding documents—that there is a transcendent and ultimate source of rights and duties that is not the government.”

At the 90-minute hearing on Tuesday, judges saved their toughest grilling for Jonathan Youngwood, who represented both the Louisiana and Texas parents challenging the laws. One judge questioned how the “passive” display of the Ten Commandments could constitute an establishment of religion. “Point me to some historical practice that looks like this,” he said.

Youngwood relied on a 1980 Supreme Court ruling, Stone v. Graham, where the court applied a judicial precedent called the Lemon test to strike down a Kentucky law requiring public school Ten Commandments displays. In its 1971 ruling in Lemon v. Kurtzman, the court had stated that the establishment clause is violated whenever a hypothetical “reasonable observer” could conclude the government endorses religion.

But, as more than one judge pointed out on Tuesday, the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District undercut the Stone v. Graham ruling’s rationale. Kennedy upheld the constitutionality of a high school coach’s postgame prayer, and Justice Neil Gorsuch’s majority opinion referred to the Lemon test as “long ago abandoned,” with the focus now on the “original meaning and history” of the establishment clause.

“It’s Lemon all the way down,” Circuit Judge James Ho, a Donald Trump appointee, told Youngwood. “If you take away Lemon, what is left of Stone?”

Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan asked about the constitutionality of requiring schools to post the Declaration of Independence or making students read Abraham Lincoln’s Inaugural Address.

What about Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail”? asked Circuit Judge Edith Jones, a Ronald Reagan appointee. “[King] refers to Saint Paul. He refers to Thomas Aquinas. He refers to the Old Testament, the New Testament—it’s about as religious as you can get,” she said.

Jones pointed to C.S. Lewis’ argument in The Abolition of Man that the principles underlying the Ten Commandments are basic limits on human behavior that various cultures and religions accept and are not unique to Christian or Jewish religious beliefs.

Circuit Judge Stephen Higginson, a Barack Obama appointee, asked Louisiana Solicitor General Ben Aguiñaga about the state’s choice of a Protestant version of the Ten Commandments.

Aguiñaga said Louisiana used a communal process, involving all stakeholders, to select the exact text to use, but he added that the choice of which version had no legal significance. “There’s no argument that just because it’s associated with Christianity, the government has thereby unconstitutionally discriminated against all other religions,” he said.

Higginson also pressed Aguiñaga to define the “hallmarks” of governmental establishment of religion, stressing his underlying concern that students who see the posters every day in the classroom are “coerced” into religious beliefs their families may not share.

Aguiñaga spelled it out. “Does this look like a government coercing somebody to attend church, punishing them for not attending church, the sorts of hallmarks that our Founders understood when this country ratified the First Amendment?” he asked.

At a post-hearing news conference outside the courthouse, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry wondered aloud at the irony of carrying currency emblazoned with “In God We Trust” yet litigating questions over the Ten Commandments. “Why can’t we just embrace the historical and traditional concepts of the Judeo-Christian principles that this nation was founded upon?” he asked. “You either read the Ten Commandments or your child is going to learn the criminal code,” he added, addressing parents.

Both Landry and Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill were upbeat about success. “I don’t think we’d be here if we didn’t have a significant number of judges who disagreed with the panel decision, both in our case and in Texas’ case,” Murrill said.

They may have good reason for optimism. Of the 17 active judges on the court, 12 are Republican appointees, including six selected by President Donald Trump.

The court may not release an opinion for several months. Even then, Murrill acknowledged that the disappointed party will likely appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Arkansas also faces litigation over its law requiring school classrooms and libraries to post the Ten Commandments. In October, a federal judge temporarily blocked the law. The following month, the state appealed to the 8th Circuit, but a date has not yet been scheduled for oral argument. Other states are considering similar laws.

Joseph Davis, an attorney with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty who assisted with the appeal, attended Tuesday’s hearing. He described the contest as a faceoff between those who want to purge religious symbols and language from society and those who want to preserve knowledge of documents foundational to Western civilization.

“It’s not neutral to have a public square that’s totally scrubbed of any religious influence, because that’s misleading,” said Davis. “Our culture, our history, has religious influences in it, alongside all kinds of other influences. So if we present a purely secular public square, we’re actually presenting a misleading view of our culture and our history in a way that tilts the scales towards secularism.”