Four states have laws on the books requiring the Ten Commandments in schools: Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, and Alabama. Each frames the display as historical rather than religious, and each has already been sued. Federal courts have split so far. The Fifth Circuit has let Louisiana’s and Texas’s laws move forward, while a federal district judge permanently blocked Arkansas’s. The U.S. Supreme Court has not yet said whether it will step in.
The Four State Laws
Louisiana went first. House Bill 71, passed in 2024, required every public school classroom to display the Ten Commandments by January 1, 2025, though litigation delayed implementation.1Louisiana State Legislature. Louisiana House Bill 71 – Historical Documents Texas followed in 2025 with Senate Bill 10, applying starting with the 2025–2026 school year.2Texas Legislature Online. Texas Senate Bill 10 Arkansas passed Senate Bill 433 (Act 573) in 2025, extending the requirement beyond schools to all state and local government buildings. Alabama enacted House Bill 178 in 2026, with a compliance deadline of January 1, 2026.
What the Laws Require Schools to Post
The physical specifications differ. Louisiana requires a poster or framed document at least 11 by 14 inches, with the commandments as the central focus in a large, readable font.1Louisiana State Legislature. Louisiana House Bill 71 – Historical Documents Texas mandates a larger display, at least 16 inches wide and 20 inches tall, with text legible to a person with average vision from anywhere in the classroom.2Texas Legislature Online. Texas Senate Bill 10 Alabama matches Louisiana’s 11-by-14-inch minimum and adds that displays must be approved by the State Superintendent of Education.
All four laws specify the exact wording of the Ten Commandments that must appear, and none allow digital screens in place of printed posters or framed documents. Louisiana’s law also requires an accompanying context statement tying the commandments to early American education, referencing the New England Primer (first published around 1688) and the McGuffey Readers.1Louisiana State Legislature. Louisiana House Bill 71 – Historical Documents That historical framing is central to how the states defend the laws in court.
Which schools must comply depends on the state. Louisiana’s law covers all public elementary and secondary schools, charter schools, and public colleges and universities.1Louisiana State Legislature. Louisiana House Bill 71 – Historical Documents Texas limits its requirement to public elementary and secondary schools, with no exemptions.2Texas Legislature Online. Texas Senate Bill 10 Alabama narrows it further, requiring displays in common areas like entryways, cafeterias, and libraries, plus classrooms where U.S. history is taught. Arkansas casts the widest net, reaching every public school classroom, every college classroom, and every state and local government building. Private and religious schools are exempt under all four laws.
Who Pays for the Posters
Each of the four laws is built to avoid spending public money on the displays. Louisiana’s statute explicitly says it does not create an unfunded mandate and directs schools to accept donated displays or donated funds to buy them.1Louisiana State Legislature. Louisiana House Bill 71 – Historical Documents The state Department of Education is also tasked with identifying free resources and posting them on its website. Texas requires schools that lack displays to accept qualifying donated posters, and also permits districts to buy them with district funds if donations do not come in.2Texas Legislature Online. Texas Senate Bill 10 Alabama likewise directs its Department of Education to identify free resources for compliance.
Can Students or Parents Opt Out
No. None of the four laws include any opt-out mechanism for students or parents, and because the displays hang permanently on classroom walls, a student cannot avoid seeing them without leaving the room. The laws do not require students to read, recite, or affirm the text, and the Fifth Circuit relied on that distinction in upholding the Texas statute. Objecting parents and students have no administrative remedy under the laws themselves; the only current path is a lawsuit.
Where the Court Cases Stand
Each law was challenged quickly. The three decisions so far have gone in different directions.
Louisiana: Roake v. Brumley
The ACLU sued before any Louisiana displays went up, and a federal district court issued a preliminary injunction blocking the law. On February 20, 2026, the Fifth Circuit, sitting en banc, vacated that injunction. Its reasoning was procedural: because no displays had actually been installed, the challenge was premature, and judging the law in the abstract would require “the substitution of speculation for adjudication.”3Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Roake v. Brumley, No. 24-30706 The court preserved the right to bring fresh challenges once actual displays are in classrooms.
Texas: Rabbi Nathan v. Alamo Heights
Texas produced a much broader ruling. On April 21, 2026, the Fifth Circuit upheld the Texas law on the merits in a 9–8 en banc decision. The majority held that the law does not resemble a “founding-era establishment of religion” and therefore passes the historical test the Supreme Court adopted in 2022. The court went further and declared that Stone v. Graham, the 1980 case that struck down a nearly identical Kentucky law, is “now an empty vessel” because the Supreme Court has “explicitly abandoned” the secular-purpose test Stone relied on.4United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Rabbi Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District The court also noted the law does not require students to recite or affirm the commandments.
Arkansas: Stinson v. Fayetteville School District
Arkansas came out the other way. A federal district court permanently blocked that state’s law, finding it violates both the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise rights of parents and students. That ruling puts the district court directly at odds with the Fifth Circuit’s decisions in Louisiana and Texas.
Why the Courts Are Splitting
The disagreement traces back to a shift in how the Supreme Court analyzes Establishment Clause cases. For decades, the controlling authority on classroom displays was Stone v. Graham (1980), in which the Court struck down Kentucky’s mandatory Ten Commandments law, finding it had “no secular legislative purpose” and that the commandments’ “preeminent purpose” was “plainly religious in nature.” The Court also rejected the argument that private funding cured the problem, holding that posting the text under state authority was the kind of official endorsement the First Amendment forbids.5Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Stone v. Graham, 449 U.S. 39
Two later cases eroded the framework Stone rested on. In Van Orden v. Perry (2005), the Court upheld a Ten Commandments monument on the Texas State Capitol grounds, distinguishing a “passive” outdoor monument surrounded by other historical markers from a classroom poster children see every day. Chief Justice Rehnquist acknowledged the commandments’ religious character while emphasizing their “undeniable historical meaning.”6Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Van Orden v. Perry, 545 U.S. 677 In American Legion v. American Humanist Association (2019), the Court held that longstanding religious monuments carry “a strong presumption of constitutionality” and criticized the three-part Lemon test that had guided Establishment Clause cases since 1971.7Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. American Legion v. American Humanist Association, 588 U.S. 29
Then, in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (2022), Justice Gorsuch’s majority declared that the Court had “long ago abandoned” the Lemon test, directing lower courts to evaluate Establishment Clause questions by looking to “historical practices and understandings” from the founding era.8Supreme Court of the United States. Kennedy v. Bremerton School District That shift is what the new state laws are designed around, and it is what the Fifth Circuit relied on in the Texas ruling. Whether Stone survives the change, or has been quietly overruled by implication, is the question courts are now dividing over.
What Happens Next
The split between the Fifth Circuit and the Arkansas district court is the kind of disagreement the Supreme Court often takes up. The ACLU has said it intends to petition the Supreme Court to review the Fifth Circuit’s Texas ruling. If the Court grants review, it would be the first time since 1980 that the justices directly address whether the Ten Commandments can be required in public school classrooms. Until then, schools in Louisiana, Texas, and Alabama face pressure to install the displays and risk as-applied challenges once posters actually go up, while parents and students who object have no path other than litigation after the fact.