Their lawsuit is the latest challenge to Senate Bill 10<\/a> \u2014 this time under Texas law. Other attempts to prohibit the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools under federal law \u2014\u00a0primarily the First Amendment\u2019s guarantee of separation of church and state \u2014 have been unsuccessful so far.<\/p>\n The mothers\u2019 suit, filed in Harris County, demands that the displays be taken down and that the court act before mid-August, when the school year begins.<\/p>\n Emily Roth, one of the plaintiffs, said in a Friday morning press release that the Ten Commandments poster purposefully ignores religious differences in the classroom and will make students feel like they do not belong.<\/p>\n \u201cIt teaches students, and their teachers, that exclusion is acceptable, maybe even preferred. That is not a lesson I want my children learning from the state of Texas,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The parents are suing under the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which the Legislature passed in 1999 and declares<\/a> that \u201ca government agency may not substantially burden a person\u2019s free exercise of religion.\u201d<\/p>\n They are also suing under the recently approved Texas Proposition 15 \u2014 also known as the \u201cParental Rights Amendment\u201d \u2014 which ensures parents<\/a> have the right \u201cto exercise care, custody, and control of the parent\u2019s child, including the right to make decisions concerning the child\u2019s upbringing.\u201d<\/p>\n Last year\u2019s Senate Bill 10 requires Texas classrooms to display donated posters of the King James Version of the Ten Commandments. The posters must be visible in the classroom and cannot be smaller than 16 by 20 inches.<\/p>\n However, various faiths \u2014 such as Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant traditions \u2014 number and word the commandments differently, the press release noted.<\/p>\n Sixteen families sued 11 school districts to block the new law in July 2025. They argued that it violates the separation of church and state and pressures students to embrace religious principles and values they may not align with.<\/p>\n In August 2025, U.S. District Judge Fred Biery blocked the law in the targeted districts.<\/p>\n A 5th Circuit Court ruling this spring then permitted the enforcement of Senate Bill 10, stating that the Texas law did not violate the Constitution. The court also cleared the way for a similar law in Louisiana.<\/p>\n Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton<\/a> has long argued that the Ten Commandments are an important part of the heritage and history of the United States. Lawyers with his office have argued that the posters \u2014 because they are displayed rather than taught \u2014 do not qualify as coercive, as students are allowed to ignore them.<\/p>\n This lawsuit comes less than two months after the Texas Board of Education approved a new Bible-infused curriculum<\/a> for public schools.<\/p>\n The three mothers suing in Houston are Roth, Audrey Rosa Nath and Sanjam Kaur Sohal.<\/p>\n Roth is raising her children without religion; Nath is raising her children across a variety of religious traditions found in her family, including Jainism, Hinduism, Judaism, and Quakerism; Sohal is Sikh, according to the press release.<\/p>\n Megan Hassan, lead counsel for the plaintiffs, said that despite the women\u2019s different religious beliefs they all want the same thing: \u201cfor their children to attend school without being compelled to display a message that conflicts with their faith.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey did not want a legal battle with the state of Texas,\u201d she said. \u201cThey wanted a poster removed from a classroom wall. That should never have required a lawsuit.\u201d<\/p>\n This story is published through a collaboration between The Texas Tribune and Religion News Service<\/a>.<\/p>\n This article<\/a> first appeared on The Texas Tribune<\/a>.![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1785600087_198_cropped-cropped-texas-tribune-favicon.png\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Ten Commandments, written out on a monument, sit outside the Texas Capitol on March 17, 2025. Lorianne…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394809,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[138896,405,138895,1967,138894,18643,138897,11359,138892,27,29,28,11362,138893,3602],"class_list":["post-394808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-church-and-state-separation","tag-harris-county","tag-houston-mothers-lawsuit","tag-ken-paxton","tag-parental-rights-amendment","tag-proposition-15","tag-religion-in-public-education","tag-senate-bill-10","tag-ten-commandments-posters","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-texas-public-schools","tag-texas-religious-freedom-restoration-act","tag-texas-tribune"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394808\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}