AUSTIN -- The Texas Senate is poised to pass legislation requiring public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments, one of several Republican-led efforts to blend religious concepts with education.
Senate Bill 10 instructs elementary and secondary school classrooms to conspicuously display a 16-inch by 20-inch poster or framed copy of the Ten Commandments in type large enough to be legible for a person with average vision from anywhere in the classroom.
The proposal, with all 20 Republican senators signed on as co-authors, would allow schools to accept donations of Ten Commandments depictions or use district funds to purchase copies.
The goal of SB 10 is to provide "moral clarity" to students and promote the nation's heritage, said Sen. Phil King, R-Weatherford, who believes the bill can be a vehicle to get the issue before the U.S. Supreme Court.
"Louisiana has already passed legislation requiring the display of Ten Commandments in public schools, and at least 14 other states have introduced similar legislation," King said at a recent committee hearing on the bill. "It is time for Texas to pass SB 10 to bring back the historical tradition of recognizing our national heritage."
The Senate Education K-16 Committee approved SB 10 last week, teeing up floor votes to send one of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick's priority bills to the House.
During the committee hearing on the bill, King said a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that abandoned the Lemon test opened the door for a Texas law.
The Lemon test, used to determine when government actions improperly favor one religion over another, was the basis of a 1980 Supreme Court decision in Stone vs. Graham that struck down a Kentucky law requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms.
King said he expects a lawsuit to be filed before SB 10 becomes law.
"Some judge will issue an injunction," he predicted, "and then hopefully it'll work its way up to the U.S. Supreme Court and that bad law of Stone v. Graham will be overturned."
None of the 11 Democratic senators are co-authors of SB 10.
Sen. José Menéndez, D-San Antonio, voiced concerns about Texas choosing one religion over others and teachers having to explain "adultery" and what it means to covet a "manservant" to young students.
Children read the Ten Commandments in Sunday school, King said, and students are "crying out for moral clarity" and "a heritage to hold onto."
Matt Krause, a lawyer with First Liberty Institute, a religious legal advocacy group, told lawmakers SB 10 has "solid legal standing."
"A lot of times you hear on these kind of bills, 'Well, if we're going to open it up to the Ten Commandments, we're going to have to open it up for this and this and this,'" Krause said. "There's no other document, really, in our country's history that comports with the history and tradition like the Ten Commandments does. So any other kind of religious reference or any other kind of document, even if I agreed with it, probably would not survive that constitutional scrutiny because it doesn't have that history and tradition."
Other Republican bills awaiting action this legislative session would protect school employees' right "to engage in religious speech or prayer while on duty" and allow school boards to require that every campus or school provide students and employees daily time for prayer and reading of the Bible or other religious texts.
In addition, House Republicans have filed at least four bills requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in schools.
In public testimony on SB 10, witnesses opposed to the legislation described it as divisive and bad policy.
"Government cheapens religious faith when it imposes mandates designed to promote it," said Rocio Fierro Perez, Texas Freedom Network's political director. "Matters of faith are best left to families and congregations, not legislation and not public schools."
Jaime Puente, economic opportunity director for the social justice organization Every Texan, said SB 10 would hurt schools.
"Since 2021, this Legislature has used its authority to impose increasingly divisive policies onto school districts," Puente said. "Banning culturally relevant curriculums, forcing libraries to purge undesirable books and putting teachers into the crosshairs of overzealous critics through the new complaints process are all examples of ways Texas has inserted fear and tension into already strained classroom environments."
Cameron Samuels, executive director of Students Engaged in Advancing Texas, said the bill does nothing to solve the problems Texans are facing.
"Amending this bill to require the Ten Commandments be made of bulletproof kevlar may actually be useful as a shield from gun violence, a real problem Texans face," Samuels said.
The committee also heard from Pastor Richard Vega of At His Feet Ministry, a Christian nonprofit, and Joe Kennedy, a football coach who sued a public school district that asked him to stop praying at the 50-yard line after games. Kennedy's case went to the Supreme Court, which in 2022 ruled the coach's conduct was protected by the First Amendment.
Kennedy said people shouldn't have to hide their faith in public, and Vega put the onus on lawmakers to pass legislation to help heal communities he said are suffering.
"We have come so far off the beaten path that our communities are ripped apart in this country and in our state," Vega said. "I hope that the men and women of God will rise up and start to be the voice that they've been called to be, because it's time that we do."