Parents vs. Texas: Who Controls Religion in the Classroom?

Empty courtroom with wooden benches and judge's bench — Photo: B Brown / Shutterstock

Texas is now testing whether the state itself can decide what religious message your child sees every day at school.

Story Snapshot

Three Houston-area moms say Texas’ Ten Commandments law tramples both religious freedom and parental rights.
The law, Senate Bill 10, orders a Ten Commandments poster in every public school classroom across the state.
A federal appeals court has already upheld the law under the U.S. Constitution, but this new case attacks it under Texas law.
The fight taps deep anger on the left and right that government “elites” ignore parents and cling to power.

Texas Moms Turn State’s Own Laws Against Ten Commandments Mandate

Three Houston-area mothers have filed a lawsuit in Harris County to stop Texas from forcing public schools to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom. They are not arguing over federal separation of church and state. Instead, they say the mandate violates the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act and a new parental rights amendment that voters added to the state constitution last November. Their suit asks the court to act before the new school year begins, so the posters come down before children walk back into class.

The law at the center of this showdown is Senate Bill 10, passed in 2025 by the Republican-led Legislature and signed by the governor. Senate Bill 10 orders every public school to accept donated Ten Commandments posters and hang them in a “conspicuous place” in each classroom, large enough for students to read from anywhere in the room. The text must follow a specific version tied to the King James Bible, a choice critics say favors one strand of Protestant Christianity over other faiths or nonreligious families.

What The Parents Say Is At Stake For Their Kids

The Houston mothers—identified as Emily Roth, Audrey Rosa Nath, and Sanjam Kaur Sohal—argue that the law puts the state between them and their children’s spiritual upbringing. The lawsuit claims the daily presence of a state-selected religious text in class “substantially interferes” with their own religious practice and their right to raise children free from government-backed faith messages. One mother says she did not plan to introduce the Ten Commandments “this young” and that the state’s version does not match her family’s values, which echoes wider worries that school rules now override family judgment.

The parents are using the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a 1999 law often cited by religious groups that bars government from placing a “substantial burden” on a person’s religious exercise without a strong reason. They are also pointing to Proposition 15, the new parental rights amendment, which says parents have the right to make decisions about how their children are raised. By flipping these tools against the Ten Commandments mandate, the families tap a shared fear across the political spectrum: that government power serves insiders first and treats ordinary parents as obstacles, not partners, in their children’s lives.

Courts Are Split, And Families See A Bigger Power Struggle

This is not the first legal fight over Senate Bill 10. Christian parents and faith leaders in North Texas sued in federal court in 2025, saying the law violated the First Amendment and their parental rights by locking in one official religious message for their children’s classrooms. Multifaith families later filed more cases, and a federal judge ordered some districts to take down Ten Commandments posters, ruling that the law violated the Constitution’s ban on government endorsement of religion. That order underscored how uneasy many families feel about children being a captive audience for any state-backed religious display.

The story changed in April 2026, when the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in a narrow 9-8 vote, upheld the Ten Commandments law. The court said Texas’ mandate does not break the separation of church and state and does not block parents from guiding their kids’ religious education. Families and civil liberties groups who lost in that case now plan to ask the Supreme Court to reverse the ruling, but for now, Texas can enforce the law. That federal win gives state leaders a powerful talking point, yet it does not answer the new claim that Texas’ own religious freedom and parental rights laws have been crossed.

Culture-War Symbol Or Warning Sign About Government Power?

Across Texas, more families are joining class action lawsuits so school districts that were not sued earlier also face pressure to stop posting the Ten Commandments. Civil liberties groups argue students are being forced to “observe and venerate” a state-approved religious message every school day, in a setting where showing dissent can be hard and where teachers answer to district rules, not parents. Supporters of the law frame the posters as a simple nod to moral and historical roots, but opponents see a clear example of politicians using children and classrooms to score culture-war points while ignoring real school problems.

Three Texas moms launch lawsuit over state’s plan to put display of Ten Commandments in every classroom

Representing Sikh, nonreligious and multi-faith households, the plaintiffs argue the mandatory posters foster exclusion in public school classroomshttps://t.co/py6SmzN0SJ

— Ⓜ️Ⓜ️ Lauren Ashley Davis -OG Meidas Mighty 🦅 (@Meidas_LaurenA) August 4, 2026

For many conservatives and liberals alike, this fight taps a deeper frustration: that the federal and state governments feel more focused on ideology and reelection than on listening to families. Conservatives who are tired of “woke” agendas now watch a Republican state push its own top-down moral message, while liberals who oppose “America First” politics see yet another sign that those in power will bend rules to suit their beliefs. On both sides, the Ten Commandments battle in Texas looks less like a calm policy debate and more like another warning that distant elites are deciding what children must see and think, while parents, teachers, and students live with the fallout.