Arguments in the latest battle over the separation of church and state will be heard Tuesday in a Louisiana federal courtroom where a law requiring that the Ten Commandments be displayed at public schools is being challenged on constitutional grounds.
And in a highly unusual development, all 17 active judges on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans will be present to hear the Texas case, as well as a similar lawsuit filed by parents and civil liberties groups in Louisiana against that state’s Ten Commandments law.
“These issues concern core questions involving the interaction of public education with this nation’s religious history and traditions,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton argued in a petition in October requesting an en banc review, which is a legal proceeding where all the judges of an appellate court preside over a case. “They warrant en banc review.”
Not mentioned in Paxton’s petition is the fact that the 5th Circuit, which serves Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, is dominated by conservatives. The 12 judges nominated by Republican presidents outnumber the five Democratic appointees.
“The Fifth Circuit doesn’t take up very many cases en banc at all, and the issues presented in this case seem very straightforward to me,” Dane Ciolino, a professor at the Loyola University New Orleans College of Law, told New Orleans radio station WWL. “There is a 1980 U.S. Supreme Court opinion that made very clear that states cannot mandate the posting of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms and buildings.”
No matter the outcome, any ruling in this case is likely to be appealed to the Supreme Court and will continue to fuel the national debate over whether the Ten Commandments laws violate the First Amendment’s establishment clause, which prohibits governments from endorsing or promoting a particular religion.
Both the Texas and Louisiana laws mandate posting the version of the Ten Commandments that Protestants use, which differs slightly from the versions that Catholics and Jews use.
The Texas lawsuit, Rabbi Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District, was filed last year by a group of Dallas-area parents and religious leaders who were seeking to block a new law that was supposed to go into effect in September 2025 requiring public schools to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom.
“These children and their families adhere to an array of faiths, and many do not practice any religion at all,” states their lawsuit, filed in July in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, San Antonio Division.
But because of the new law, “all of these students will be forcibly subjected to scriptural dictates, day in and day out,” the lawsuit states.
U.S. District Judge Fred Biery sided with the parents in August and issued a temporary ruling against the state’s new requirement. Texas officials quickly appealed.
That case was then paired with a legal challenge to Louisiana’s first-in-the-nation requirement, signed into law in 2024, that the Ten Commandments be displayed in every public school classroom.
U.S. District Judge John deGravelles in November 2024 issued an order blocking the Louisiana law, calling it “facially unconstitutional.”
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, a Republican, said she disagreed and announced that she would “immediately appeal” the judge’s ruling.
In June, a panel of three judges from the 5th Circuit upheld deGravelles’ ruling. The judges in the panel were appointed by Presidents Bill Clinton and Joe Biden, both Democrats, and George W. Bush, a Republican.
Once again, Murrill vowed to appeal the ruling — this time to the full panel of 5th Circuit judges.
Before Tuesday’s hearing, Texas state Rep. Candy Noble, a Republican and one of the authors of her state’s Ten Commandment law, urged the 5th Circuit judges to back it.
“Returning the Ten Commandments to our Texas classrooms gives our school children an understanding that the Ten Commandments were foundational to America’s educational and judicial systems,” Noble said in a statement.
