WASHINGTON – The following is a statement from American Humanist Association Executive Director Fish Stark in response to the Department of Justice’s indictment of civil rights organization Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
“The Trump Administration’s targeting of the SPLC is a deliberate attempt to dismantle the institutions that stand between this administration and unchecked power. For decades, the SPLC has been at the center of the fight against hatred and bigotry in this country. And that is exactly why they are being targeted.
“When those in power begin rewriting history – elevating extremists as patriots and recasting the protection of marginalized communities as persecution – it is the organizations bearing witness and fighting back that become the enemy. For this reason, the American Humanist Association stands proudly in solidarity with the SPLC and everyone they serve.”
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The American Humanist Association (AHA) works to protect the rights of humanists, atheists, and other nontheistic Americans. The AHA advances the ethical and life-affirming worldview of humanism, which—without beliefs in gods or other supernatural forces—encourages individuals to live informed and meaningful lives that aspire to the greater good of humanity.
Cranford, NJ – Yesterday, in a split 9-8 decision, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that Texas may require its public schools to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom. The controversial religious display mandate, Senate Bill 10 (SB 10), was signed into law by Texas Governor Greg Abbot last June and took effect at the start of the current school year. It is one of several recent efforts to impose the personal religious and political ideologies of powerful Texas politicians onto students of all backgrounds and beliefs. After its passage, the measure was almost immediately challenged by Texas families, faith leaders, and civil rights organizations. A lower federal court found that the mandate violated the First Amendment and blocked several school districts from posting the religious displays “in a conspicuous place,” as required by the statute. Tuesday’s decision reversed that ruling. In a dissenting opinion, Judge Stephen A. Higginson wrote that a state “legislating that specific, politically chosen scripture be installed in every public-school classroom” contradicts the founders’ clear intent “to prevent large religious sects from using political power to impose their religion on others.” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has long advocated to Christianize public education, recently suggested, “There is no legal reason to stop Texas from honoring a core ethical foundation of our law, especially not a bogus claim about the ‘separation of church and state,’ which is a phrase found nowhere in the Constitution.” Nick Fish, president of American Atheists, issued a forceful response following yesterday’s ruling: “The politicians claiming this is about history and not religion are lying. Paxton has said that he wants ‘the Word of [his] God’ in publicly funded Texas classrooms. Abbott has said it’s about the nation’s moral fabric. These are politicians who falsely claim our country — a country famously founded on religious freedom for all – was ‘founded on the rock of Biblical Truth.’ But ask any actual historian, and they’ll tell you: That’s not accurate history, it’s a Christian Nationalist myth. And we’ll keep fighting for the atheist kid, the Muslim kid, the Jewish kid, and all students — and their families — who do not share the religious beliefs of state officials because they still live in a free country, albeit within a state that is increasingly less free and less American under the leadership of religious supremacists.” The court’s conservative majority held that the large displays of a sectarian text in public school classrooms do not violate the Establishment Clause because they do not amount to “coercive indoctrination,” even as public school students are legally considered a captive audience. As one attorney representing the families argued, “[Students] can’t just look away, Your Honor. Not for 13 years. Not in every class. Not every minute of every day.” Geoffrey T. Blackwell, legal director for American Atheists, added: “That this outcome was foreseeable by those who closely monitor church-state issues does not mitigate its harm. It drastically reinterprets the First Amendment, rewrites our nation’s pluralistic legacy, unconstitutionally favors one religion, and unconscionably exposes young people to religious indoctrination. In response to a wave […]
The Johnson Amendment is a longstanding federal law prohibiting tax-exempt nonprofits, including churches, from engaging in partisan political activity. In an April 20 letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who continues to oversee the IRS despite his acting role having formally ended, the national state/church watchdog warns that any effort to weaken or reinterpret the Johnson Amendment to allow houses of worship to engage in political endorsements would be unconstitutional and deeply damaging both to democratic governance and the integrity of the nonprofit sector.
“The Johnson Amendment is a bright-line rule: If you want taxpayer subsidies, you don’t get to play partisan politics,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “Weakening that rule would invite corruption and erode public trust.”
Enacted in 1954, the Johnson Amendment ensures that organizations benefiting from tax-exempt status and tax-deductible donations cannot use those publicly subsidized resources to support or oppose political candidates. Bessent has indicated that forthcoming guidance will aim to provide “clear, administrable standards” to religious organizations, notably with no reference to other 501(c)(3) nonprofits, including how the law applies to communications made during religious services. The move follows mounting pressure from Christian nationalist groups seeking to carve out exceptions for churches.
FFRF is urging the Treasury Department to ensure that any guidance strictly adheres to federal law and does not create unlawful exemptions for religious organizations.
FFRF emphasizes that rebranding partisan endorsements as “religious communications” does not change the law and that the executive branch lacks the authority to create such carve-outs.
“The executive branch cannot nullify or rewrite an act of Congress,” writes FFRF Legal Counsel Chris Line, adding, “only Congress has the authority to amend or repeal the Johnson Amendment.”
FFRF further cautions that exempting churches from the rules that govern other nonprofits would constitute unconstitutional favoritism, effectively favoring religion under the guise of religious freedom.
The Johnson Amendment does not restrict religious belief or issue advocacy. Clergy as individuals remain free to speak on political matters, so long as it’s not from a pulpit or otherwise utilizing tax-exempt resources. Tax-exempt entities are free to create 501(c)(4) affiliates that can engage in some endorsement, if they wish. Or such churches or organizations can simply forgo tax exemption in order to endorse or oppose candidates.
Weakening the amendment would open the door to tax-deductible political spending, allowing wealthy donors to funnel money into campaigns through churches with little transparency or oversight.
“The law Congress enacted has not changed.” FFRF’s letter concludes. “Tax-exempt status is a privilege, not a right, and it cannot be used as a vehicle for partisan political activity.”
FFRF will continue to monitor developments and take action as needed to defend the constitutional principle separating state and church.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With about 42,000 members, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals today upheld S.B. 10, a Texas law requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom across the state.
Represented by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Texas and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, with Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP serving as pro bono counsel, the plaintiffs in Rabbi Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District are a multifaith group of 15 Texas families with children in public schools.
The organizations representing the plaintiffs issued the following statement in response to the decision:
“We are extremely disappointed in today’s decision. The Court’s ruling goes against fundamental First Amendment principles and binding U.S. Supreme Court authority. The First Amendment safeguards the separation of church and state, and the freedom of families to choose how, when and whether to provide their children with religious instruction. This decision tramples those rights. We anticipate asking the Supreme Court to reverse this decision and uphold the religious freedom rights of children and parents.”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With more than 41,000 members including nearly 1,800 in Texas, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation has persuaded the Iowa High School Athletic Association to revise the criteria student-athletes need to win the state’s highest school honor.
A concerned Iowa parent reported that the Iowa High School Athletic Association (IHSAA) was imposing a religious criterion on students in order to be eligible for the Bernie Saggau Award of Merit, an award described as the “highest student honor” that the association awards annually. According to the official description, the award is “presented annually to the graduating student who best exemplifies a patriotic spirit, with strong religious and moral convictions, living and professing the qualities of honesty, integrity and sportsmanship [emphasis added].” FFRF learned that high schools throughout Iowa were advertising the award using the “strong religious and moral convictions” language.
FFRF stepped in to make certain nonreligious students are also eligible for the award.
“Because the IHSAA is a state actor due to its operational agreement with the Iowa Department of Education, the IHSAA is obligated to respect students’ First Amendment rights,” FFRF Staff Attorney Sammi Lawrence wrote to the district.
Public school students have a constitutional right to be free from discrimination on the basis of religion or nonreligion when participating in the Iowa High School Athletic Association contest. Participation includes students’ eligibility for the Bernie Saggau Award of Merit regardless of whether they subscribe to a religion. It is well settled that public entities may not show favoritism toward or coerce belief or participation in religion, especially in the school context. By conditioning eligibility for the award on “strong religious . . . convictions,” the association is clearly favoring religion over nonreligion.
Thankfully, the organization took FFRF’s guidance on the issue.
Iowa High School Athletic Association Executive Director Tom Keating emailed FFRF informing the state/church watchdog of a new, more inclusive approach regarding the award.
“The words, ‘religious and’ have been removed from the verbiage on the award certificate,” Keating wrote. “This year’s certificates will reflect that change.”
FFRF is pleased to see the Iowa’s top school athletic association work to make a respectful environment for freethinking Hawkeye State students.
“Students should never be excluded from an award because they are atheists or otherwise nonreligious, particularly when 44 percent of young people today have no religious affiliation,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “We’re pleased the association corrected this unconstitutional requirement and will judge students based on merit rather than applying an inappropriate religious litmus test.”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with over 41,000 members across the country, including hundreds of members in Iowa. FFRF’s purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between church and state, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
As Texas rolls out its $1 billion school voucher program, one of the largest in the country, Islamic schools have faced exclusion amid openly hostile rhetoric from state officials. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has bluntly stated, “We don’t want school choice funds going to radical Islamic indoctrination.”
Abbott’s comment lays bare what voucher proponents often deny: that so-called “school choice” programs are not religiously neutral, but instead invite government officials to pick and choose which religions they favor for public support. Such schemes inevitably lead to discrimination and constitutional violations.
“You can’t have it both ways,” FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor points out. “If taxpayer dollars are going to fund sectarian religious education, then the government is inevitably forced to decide which religious teachings are ‘acceptable’ and which are not, thereby engaging in discrimination against some and favoritism toward others. That’s precisely the kind of action the Constitution forbids.”
Already, some Islamic schools are suing, alleging religious discrimination after being excluded from participation while Christian schools are invited to receive public funds. Even as courts have intervened to allow applications, Texas officials continue to signal resistance to including Islamic institutions.
At the same time, lawmakers in other states are advancing policies that explicitly target Muslim-affiliated schools. In Florida, recent legislation threatens to strip voucher funding from schools tied, often speculatively, to organizations labeled as “terrorist,” raising serious concerns about religious profiling and government overreach.
“When public money is diverted to religious schools, discrimination is not a bug, it’s the system working as designed,” Gaylor explains. “Today, it’s Muslim schools being targeted. Tomorrow, it could be another minority faith. The only consistent and constitutional solution is to keep taxpayer dollars out of religiously segregated schools altogether.”
Voucher advocates champion public funding for Christian schools, insisting these programs are about “freedom” and “neutrality,” but sing a different tune when their tax dollars might go to support religions they do not subscribe to.
“Tax dollars should go only to public schools, which welcome all-comers and are dedicated to teaching, not indoctrinating in religion,” adds Gaylor.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation objects to citizens being taxed to support any religion, and especially being used to proselytize students.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With about 42,000 members, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.
This newsletter is free and goes out to over 24,000 subscribers, but it’s only able to sustain itself due to the support I receive from a small percentage of regular readers. Would you please consider becoming one of those supporters? You can subscribe via Patreon or the Subscribe button below! You can also make one-time donations through Venmo or PayPal.
A quick personal note: This Saturday at 4:00p, I’ll be speaking in Denver, Colorado at the Secular Hub. The event is sponsored by the FFRF Metro Denver Chapter. All the details are here—the talk is free but space is limited, so please RSVP! Hope to see you there!
The founder of a prominent podcast critical of the Mormon Church is now being sued by the Church for trademark and copyright infringement… as if there’s any way listeners might be confused between the podcast and the subject of it.
John Dehlin in a thumbnail from his podcast
John Dehlin began the Mormon Stories Podcast in 2005 when he was questioning whether or not to leave the LDS Church. It soon became a haven for other critics and former Mormons—and a landing space for listeners who harbored the same doubts but knew the Mormon Church wasn’t a safe place to get their questions answered in a meaningful way. (True story: I’ve met a lot of ex-Mormons over the years, and my first question to them is inevitably whether they’ve heard of Dehlin and his podcast. The answer is, almost without exception, yes. It’s the podcast you listen to when you’re walking away from the religion.)
In 2015, Dehlin was officially kicked out of the Church for the “crime” of apostasy—he was accused of leading people away from the Church—though Dehlin argued the real reason was because he openly and proudly supported same-sex marriage and the ordination of female priests. I also interviewed him around that time.
The podcast has become popular enough that it spurred the creation of a non-profit group—the Open Stories Foundation—in 2010 to oversee the show and go beyond it. In 2024, the group generated over $1.12 million in revenue.
That’s nothing, of course, compared to the tens of billions of dollars hoarded by the LDS Church. You would think, given all the very legitimate criticism of Mormons from all over the place, the smart move would be to simply ignore what one podcaster is doing, even if he’s popular, in order to avoid the Streisand effect.
But the Mormon Church is taking the opposite approach. Last week, after months of conversations between the two sides, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints sued Dehlin for trademark and copyright infringement. They’re arguing he has no right to use the word “Mormon” or any of their materials.
As Defendants are well aware, the public associates the term MORMON with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has used the mark MORMON and other names and marks incorporating the term MORMON since its founding nearly 200 years ago. Defendants’ use of Church trademarks and copyrighted materials has caused and will continue to cause individuals to be confused and access Defendants’ content mistakenly believing it comes from or is affiliated with or endorsed by the Church. This is not by accident. Defendants adopted a blue MORMON STORIES logo with a light-rays design prominently used by the Church, showing Defendants’ intent to capitalize on and increase confusion. Defendants’ logo was calculated to imitate the Church’s logos by using confusingly similar color, font, and other design elements, as shown below.
In absolutely no sane world is anyone listening to Dehlin’s podcast and confusing it with Official Church Propaganda. The closest you would ever get is someone searching for information about Mormonism, stumbling across the podcast, and quickly realizing it’s not advertising for the LDS Church. After all, why would the banner for the show include Dehlin’s picture—an apostate!—instead of Mormon leaders?
But the Mormon Church insists there’s confusion. To make that argument, the lawsuit includes examples, cherry-picked from the podcast’s social media pages, of people who came across it because they believed it was pro-Mormon… only to realize that wasn’t the case. Here’s just a sampling:
There are more comments where those came from, but they all seem to prove the opposite point. People found Mormon Stories because they had questions about Mormonism… and then realized it wasn’t promoting the LDS Church. At no point in any of the comments included in the lawsuit do people say they genuinely confused Dehlin’s words (or his guest’s words) for Church policy. The fact that some of those commenters say they stopped listening immediately after their realization are points in Dehlin’s favor!
(Also, for a podcast this popular, it’s deeply unfair for the Church to go searching for comments suggesting confusion is afoot because you’re bound to find anything you want. That’s the nature of popular comment threads. It’s also likely people in those threads said slurs or made ad hominem attacks against Mormon leaders. Whatever the case, it’s absurd to blame the podcast host for that when he’s not baiting any of that.)
To avoid confusion, the LDS Church demanded that Dehlin include a disclaimer everywhere saying that his podcast for ex-Mormons and believers who are being persecuted for questioning LDS Church policies isn’t an official product of the religious sect. But that, too, is beyond parody. No one should have to open their show by explaining which groups they’re not affiliated with.
Keep in mind that there are pro-Mormon podcasts that use the word in their titles, too, but there’s no indication the LDS Church has ever gone after any of them for trademark violations even though those podcasts are not official products of the Church either.
Whatever the case, the two sides began to discuss their positions beginning in February.
Dehlin agreed to remove any copyrighted images from his website and social media pages. (The LDS Church says he broke that agreement by later using an image of a temple to advertise an episode.) He changed the logo’s color from Mormon blue to non-Mormon orange. He even added the disclaimer to podcast descriptions on every platform.
What Dehlin refused to do was issue a disclaimer at the beginning of every show “acknowledging that Mormon Stories is not affiliated with the Church.”
That’s why the Church is now going after him. And their case is weak.
Just consider the copyright issues. The lawsuit includes examples of official photos released by the Church that were later used in the thumbnails for Dehlin’s podcast videos:
That seems like a perfectly normal case of “fair use.”
The Church is also mad that Dehlin uses the word “Mormon” at all… which is wildly ironic given that the LDS Church itself has urged people to stop using the word because they don’t want to be known that way. (Case in point: The Mormon Tabernacle Choir is now officially called the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square.) And yet here they are telling the court that it’s their word and not anyone else’s… and they have the paperwork from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to back it up.
This is all, they say, deeply damaging to the billion-dollar religious organization:
Unless these acts of Mormon Stories are restrained by this Court, they will continue, and they will continue to cause irreparable injury to Plaintiffs and to the public, for which there is no adequate remedy at law.
May we all strive to have this kind of influence. The Mormon Church is seriously arguing that Dehlin’s perfectly defensible use of their language and imagery might topple the entire damn religion. As if one man could destroy all of Salt Lake City through the power of… a podcast.
The lawsuit asks the court to stop Dehlin from using any logos or imagery that is “confusingly similar” to the LDS Church’s, and they want a jury trial.
Dehlin issued some informal responses to all this already, saying that he’s “been using the Mormon Stories name for my podcast for more than 20 years without any objection from the Church” and that he made plenty of changes at the request of LDS Church lawyers. But he adds that it’s “unreasonable” to demand anything beyond that:
… We didn’t feel any disclaimer was required, but in the spirit of cooperation we adopted one in our podcast description. The Church wanted us to make the disclaimer more prominent so it was essentially the primary thing anyone sees in our branding which we believe is unreasonable. We don’t want our primary message to be about what we are NOT. We have operated for a long time promoting who and what we are…
He says he was surprised by the lawsuit “given how cooperative we have been.” (There is a fund for supporters who want to contribute to the podcast’s legal defense.)
The LDS Church insists it’s not going after Dehlin for what he says, only for the way he’s marketing his show, but there’s just no jury on Earth who would buy that excuse:
People are free to express support for or criticism of the Church and its teachings. This case does not concern the content of the podcast.
There’s a far stronger case that the Broadway musical “The Book of Mormon” might confuse outsiders who don’t know any better, but the Church famously didn’t fight that battle in court. If anything, they used it to their advantage. Did the Church sue Hulu over “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives”? Not a chance. Even though that suggests a window into, well, the secret lives of Mormon wives.
I guess that strategy of not picking fights with people who aren’t promoting the Church is out the window now, given that they’re going after one of their most prominent critics.
On Monday, Dehlin released a video summarizing and responding to the lawsuit:
It’s truly amazing this is how the LDS Church is wasting its time and money. Pope Leo is fighting fascism while the Mormon Church is fighting a podcaster.
This lawsuit also tells you everything you need to know about the modern LDS Church. They’re not really trying to protect their “brand” at all. They’re just trying to put obstacles in the path of someone who has helped countless people leave the Church. Rather than addressing the criticisms people on Dehlin’s show make, they’d rather turn off the microphone by forcing Dehlin to fight an expensive legal battle.
This is how you know the show makes a positive difference in people’s lives. It shows them their lives can be fulfilling and wonderful and guilt-free outside the bubble of Mormonism.
If this is how the LDS Church treats a former insider who asks questions and builds community, imagine what it signals to current members who are quietly doubting. If you become too effective at articulating those doubts, the institution won’t just argue with you; it’ll try to silence you.
By picking this fight, the Mormon Church is only confirming the criticisms they’re so desperate to suppress.
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This newsletter is free and goes out to over 24,000 subscribers, but it’s only able to sustain itself due to the support I receive from a small percentage of regular readers. Would you please consider becoming one of those supporters? You can subscribe via Patreon or the Subscribe button below! You can also make one-time donations through Venmo or PayPal.
In a predictable but utterly awful ruling, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has just ruled that Texas can force public schools to put up posters of the Ten Commandments, giving Christian Nationalists a new way to impose their religious beliefs onto children.
This will undoubtedly be appealed to the Supreme Court, but that risks exposing the rest of the country to Christian indoctrination in schools.
First, let’s remember how we got here.
A Ten Commandments monument (image via Adobe Spark)
Last year, Texas lawmakers passed a bill, appropriately titled SB 10, to shove the Commandments into schools despite widespread opposition. (Democrat James Talarico, now a U.S. Senate candidate, did his best to highlight the hypocrisy of the people voting for the bill as well as the possible backlash it might receive.)
Like so many other iterations of these bills, this one said every classroom would have to display a durable or framed 16” x 20” poster of the Ten Commandments—King James’ Version only. They could be privately donated or bought “using district funds.” All of the posters would have to read as follows:
The Ten Commandments
I AM the LORD thy God.
Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven images.
Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain.
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.
Thou shalt not kill.
Thou shalt not commit adultery.
Thou shalt not steal.
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his cattle, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s.
The law also included a provision requiring the attorney general of the state to defend districts that got sued over this. If they were to lose the case, the state would then be “liable for the expenses, costs, judgments, or settlements of the claims arising out of the representation.” Which is to say if this ended up backfiring on Christian Nationalists, don’t worry, because taxpayers would foot the bill for their ignorance.
The Republicans (and a handful of Democrats) ignored all the opposition to this bill, including a letter signed by over 150 Christian and Jewish leaders who said it “undermines the faith and freedom we cherish.”
You can read more details about the lawsuit and the Plaintiffs here.
In short, though, the lawsuit noted that a SCOTUS decision from a case nearly five decades ago, Stone v. Graham, declared a virtually identical law in Kentucky unconstitutional. The lawsuit also said that in the Stone case, and more recently in Louisiana, the Ten Commandments were required to have a “context statement”—a disclaimer of sorts—alongside the posters, explaining the supposed historical relevance of the Decalogue. They didn’t even bother with that in Texas. So if those previous laws were declared illegal, this one was even more egregious.
In August, a federal judge sided with the church/state separation crowd, putting a temporary hold on the ridiculous law… but only in a handful of districts. An amended lawsuit was successful in preventing the law from going into effect in other districts too. It became a huge game of Whac-A-Mole where schools districts had to decide whether to put up posters they knew were illegal and risk getting sued by church/state separation groups… or risk getting sued by a scandal-plagued and highly litigious Republican attorney general (Ken Paxton) breathing down their necks.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton asked the 5th Circuit Court to overturn Biery’s ruling and allow all 17 active judges on the court to hear both the Texas and Louisiana cases together.
A federal judge blocked Louisiana’s Ten Commandments law from taking effect in 2024, a decision unanimously upheld last year by a panel of three judges on the 5th Circuit Court. With all active judges on the court now hearing the cases, Texas and Louisiana officials hope for a more favorable ruling.
Twelve of the appeals court’s 17 active judges were appointed by Republican presidents. The court is considered one of the most conservative in the nation.
The families who sued said the imposition of the Commandments violated the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause and coerced their children into accepting the Christian faith. The judges rejected both arguments.
They said the Stone precedent was no longer in effect because the justification for that decision—the “Lemon test,” which offered a method to determine if a law violated church/state separation—had been killed off by the U.S. Supreme Court.
“With Lemon extracted,” they wrote, “there is nothing left of Stone.”
What about the Establishment Clause claim? Didn’t the posters suggest government promotion of Christianity?
The judges said no because no one was forcing Christian views on anyone:
S.B. 10 looks nothing like a historical religious establishment. It does not tell churches or synagogues or mosques what to believe or how to worship or whom to employ as priests, rabbis, or imams. It punishes no one who rejects the Ten Commandments, no matter the reason. It levies no taxes to support any clergy. It does not co-opt churches to perform civic functions. These are the kinds of things “establishments of religion” did at the founding. S.B. 10 does none of them.
Plaintiffs counter that, like historical establishments, S.B. 10 is “coercive” because it pressures children to honor the Ten Commandments. Not so. S.B. 10 requires no religious exercise or observance. Students are neither catechized on the Commandments nor taught to adopt them. Nor are teachers commanded to proselytize students who ask about the displays or contradict students who disagree with them.
They’re essentially saying there’s nothing Christian about the Christian commandments. It’s just a list devoid of any context. By the same logic, Texas could pass a law to put up The Satanic Temple’s Seven Fundamental Tenets and that would be fine, but they happened to choose this list, so what’s the big deal?
Similarly, they said that because kids don’t have to do anything in response to the posters, it’s not really coercive either.
To Plaintiffs, merely exposing children to religious language is enough to make the displays engines of coercive indoctrination. We disagree.
Another argument the Plaintiffs made was that there was “no longstanding tradition” of displaying the Ten Commandments in public spaces and no legal precedent to back up that notion. That mattered because, with the Lemon Test gone, the Supreme Court has relied on the fickle idea of tradition. If a Christian cross, for example, has been up on city property for decades and decades without complaint, then that’s justification enough for it to be allowed to remain there. This lawsuit, however, said that argument couldn’t work here because a tradition of putting Ten Commandments posters up in schools didn’t exist.
The judges just dismissed that whole argument. They said that tradition might be fine to invoke when it comes to invocation prayers at governments meetings, but the “opposite” logic—that a lack of pushing the Ten Commandments in schools means we shouldn’t do it now—is a “bizarre view” that can’t be justified. Apparently, the only way the tradition argument can be used is to allow something that used to happen, not prohibit something that never happened.
By saying that, they also dismissed all the expert testimony that said this practice of shoving Christianity in the classroom was a modern creation—a very simple way to ignore the facts.
The idea that the posters would pressure kids into accepting Christianity was also rejected by these judges. They compared it to the Pledge of Allegiance—which is also religious, with its “one Nation, under God” line—to argue that students aren’t forced to say it. Therefore, they conclude, the Commandments don’t burden anyone’s religious exercise.
The dissenting judges in this case were apoplectic about what their colleagues just did. Writing for the group, Judge Irma Carrillo Ramirez wrote:
Because legislation requiring the permanent fixture of religious rules in public-school classrooms, with no “educational function,” violates these most basic First Amendment principles, I respectfully dissent.
The dissenters wrote that the Stone precedent is very much still in effect even if the Lemon test is no longer being used. They even cited the Kennedy case—the one about the showboating football coach who demanded the right to perform his prayers at midfield after games—to say that the Supreme Court still prohibits religious coercion. Kennedy was allowed to continue his prayers because students weren’t theoretically involved; the Ten Commandments law, however, directly impacts kids.
To argue otherwise ignores the unique context of placing religious scripture in public-school classrooms where, “given the impressionability of the young, government must exercise particular care in separating church and state”… It also ignores the self-evident nature of the Ten Commandments: they “command” the reader to follow certain directives. Those directives are largely religious in nature.
As one dissenting judge pointed out, there’s no way to interpret these Commandments other than as a call to adopt a specific version of Christianity:
Texas children will naturally examine these posters and be left to reflect on the fact that one religion—different from the one they observe in their home, their synagogue, their mosque, or other place of worship—was selected to be in their school as a representation of what? An expectation of a model student? A good citizen? A properly devout person? The majority insists that students will not be “catechized,” but forgets their curiosity. Surrounded by the Ten Commandments displays, students will wonder about “the LORD”; they will wonder about “other gods”; they will wonder about “graven images”; they will wonder about “kill[ing]”; they will wonder about “adultery”; they will wonder about “covet[ing]” a neighbor’s wife… Teachers inevitably will be asked to answer these questions, but Texas parents did not entrust public-school teachers with the spiritual education of their children. It is a parent’s right to have these conversations—not inside the classroom, absent their input, but with their children, present at home.
They also pointed out that there’s no way to opt out of this situation. Students may not have to say the Pledge, but they can’t escape looking at these posters.
Stated simply, “the right of parents ‘to direct the religious upbringing of their’ children would be an empty promise if it did not follow those children into the public school classroom”… If schools across Texas must display this scripture, then today our court ordains that empty promise.
The church/state separation groups that filed this lawsuit expressed their disappointment in the decision and announced that they have every intention of fighting this even more:
“We are extremely disappointed in today’s decision. The Court’s ruling goes against fundamental First Amendment principles and binding U.S. Supreme Court authority. The First Amendment safeguards the separation of church and state, and the freedom of families to choose how, when and if to provide their children with religious instruction. This decision tramples those rights. We anticipate asking the Supreme Court to reverse this decision and uphold the religious-freedom rights of children and parents.”
So what happens now, other than the possible appeal?
It’s not clear. The Texas law is back in effect, and districts that receive donations of the posters will be required to put them up. But there’s nothing preventing malicious compliance or other posters (with better moral teachings) from going up alongside them.
Hell, a couple of months ago, a website went up offering well-designed Ten Commandments posters that meet all the requirements of the Texas bill (and ones in other states) that might make Republicans rethink their own law.
But the bottom line is that Texas conservatives have used the courts to tell kids which religion counts—and which ones don’t. They’re sending a message that kids from non-Christian families (or the “wrong” kind of Christian ones) are second-class citizens.
Texas passed an illegal law, made up details about American history to defend their position, practically bragged about their true intentions along the way, and the Fifth Circuit gave them the victory they wanted anyway. It’s a disaster for anyone who believes in church/state separation and a classroom free of religious coercion.
The Christians who are celebrating today’s ruling would be furious if schools put up lists of Islamic or humanistic moral lessons, even though that would be legal using the same logic that the Fifth Circuit is using today, but because they believe their religion is superior to all others, they’re not going to complain at all.
(This is a breaking story and may change as new information comes in. Portions of this article were published earlier)
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In a predictable but utterly awful ruling, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has just ruled that Texas can force public schools to put up posters of the Ten Commandments, giving Christian Nationalists a new way to impose their religious beliefs onto children.
This will undoubtedly be appealed to the Supreme Court, but that risks exposing the rest of the country to Christian indoctrination in schools.
First, let’s remember how we got here.
A Ten Commandments monument (image via Adobe Spark)
Last year, Texas lawmakers passed a bill, appropriately titled SB 10, to shove the Commandments into schools despite widespread opposition. (Democrat James Talarico, now a U.S. Senate candidate, did his best to highlight the hypocrisy of the people voting for the bill as well as the possible backlash it might receive.)
Like so many other iterations of these bills, this one said every classroom would have to display a durable or framed 16” x 20” poster of the Ten Commandments—King James’ Version only. They could be privately donated or bought “using district funds.” All of the posters would have to read as follows:
The Ten Commandments
I AM the LORD thy God.
Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven images.
Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain.
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.
Thou shalt not kill.
Thou shalt not commit adultery.
Thou shalt not steal.
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his cattle, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s.
The law also included a provision requiring the attorney general of the state to defend districts that got sued over this. If they were to lose the case, the state would then be “liable for the expenses, costs, judgments, or settlements of the claims arising out of the representation.” Which is to say if this ended up backfiring on Christian Nationalists, don’t worry, because taxpayers would foot the bill for their ignorance.
The Republicans (and a handful of Democrats) ignored all the opposition to this bill, including a letter signed by over 150 Christian and Jewish leaders who said it “undermines the faith and freedom we cherish.”
You can read more details about the lawsuit and the Plaintiffs here.
In short, though, the lawsuit noted that a SCOTUS decision from a case nearly five decades ago, Stone v. Graham, declared a virtually identical law in Kentucky unconstitutional. The lawsuit also said that in the Stone case, and more recently in Louisiana, the Ten Commandments were required to have a “context statement”—a disclaimer of sorts—alongside the posters, explaining the supposed historical relevance of the Decalogue. They didn’t even bother with that in Texas. So if those previous laws were declared illegal, this one was even more egregious.
In August, a federal judge sided with the church/state separation crowd, putting a temporary hold on the ridiculous law… but only in a handful of districts. An amended lawsuit was successful in preventing the law from going into effect in other districts too. It became a huge game of Whac-A-Mole where schools districts had to decide whether to put up posters they knew were illegal and risk getting sued by church/state separation groups… or risk getting sued by a scandal-plagued and highly litigious Republican attorney general (Ken Paxton) breathing down their necks.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton asked the 5th Circuit Court to overturn Biery’s ruling and allow all 17 active judges on the court to hear both the Texas and Louisiana cases together.
A federal judge blocked Louisiana’s Ten Commandments law from taking effect in 2024, a decision unanimously upheld last year by a panel of three judges on the 5th Circuit Court. With all active judges on the court now hearing the cases, Texas and Louisiana officials hope for a more favorable ruling.
Twelve of the appeals court’s 17 active judges were appointed by Republican presidents. The court is considered one of the most conservative in the nation.
The families who sued said the imposition of the Commandments violated the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause and coerced their children into accepting the Christian faith. The judges rejected both arguments.
They said the Stone precedent was no longer in effect because the justification for that decision—the “Lemon test,” which offered a method to determine if a law violated church/state separation—had been killed off by the U.S. Supreme Court.
“With Lemon extracted,” they wrote, “there is nothing left of Stone.”
What about the Establishment Clause claim? Didn’t the posters suggest government promotion of Christianity?
The judges said no because no one was forcing Christian views on anyone:
S.B. 10 looks nothing like a historical religious establishment. It does not tell churches or synagogues or mosques what to believe or how to worship or whom to employ as priests, rabbis, or imams. It punishes no one who rejects the Ten Commandments, no matter the reason. It levies no taxes to support any clergy. It does not co-opt churches to perform civic functions. These are the kinds of things “establishments of religion” did at the founding. S.B. 10 does none of them.
Plaintiffs counter that, like historical establishments, S.B. 10 is “coercive” because it pressures children to honor the Ten Commandments. Not so. S.B. 10 requires no religious exercise or observance. Students are neither catechized on the Commandments nor taught to adopt them. Nor are teachers commanded to proselytize students who ask about the displays or contradict students who disagree with them.
They’re essentially saying there’s nothing Christian about the Christian commandments. It’s just a list devoid of any context. By the same logic, Texas could pass a law to put up The Satanic Temple’s Seven Fundamental Tenets and that would be fine, but they happened to choose this list, so what’s the big deal?
Similarly, they said that because kids don’t have to do anything in response to the posters, it’s not really coercive either.
To Plaintiffs, merely exposing children to religious language is enough to make the displays engines of coercive indoctrination. We disagree.
Another argument the Plaintiffs made was that there was “no longstanding tradition” of displaying the Ten Commandments in public spaces and no legal precedent to back up that notion. That mattered because, with the Lemon Test gone, the Supreme Court has relied on the fickle idea of tradition. If a Christian cross, for example, has been up on city property for decades and decades without complaint, then that’s justification enough for it to be allowed to remain there. This lawsuit, however, said that argument couldn’t work here because a tradition of putting Ten Commandments posters up in schools didn’t exist.
The judges just dismissed that whole argument. They said that tradition might be fine to invoke when it comes to invocation prayers at governments meetings, but the “opposite” logic—that a lack of pushing the Ten Commandments in schools means we shouldn’t do it now—is a “bizarre view” that can’t be justified. Apparently, the only way the tradition argument can be used is to allow something that used to happen, not prohibit something that never happened.
By saying that, they also dismissed all the expert testimony that said this practice of shoving Christianity in the classroom was a modern creation—a very simple way to ignore the facts.
The idea that the posters would pressure kids into accepting Christianity was also rejected by these judges. They compared it to the Pledge of Allegiance—which is also religious, with its “one Nation, under God” line—to argue that students aren’t forced to say it. Therefore, they conclude, the Commandments don’t burden anyone’s religious exercise.
The dissenting judges in this case were apoplectic about what their colleagues just did. Writing for the group, Judge Irma Carrillo Ramirez wrote:
Because legislation requiring the permanent fixture of religious rules in public-school classrooms, with no “educational function,” violates these most basic First Amendment principles, I respectfully dissent.
The dissenters wrote that the Stone precedent is very much still in effect even if the Lemon test is no longer being used. They even cited the Kennedy case—the one about the showboating football coach who demanded the right to perform his prayers at midfield after games—to say that the Supreme Court still prohibits religious coercion. Kennedy was allowed to continue his prayers because students weren’t theoretically involved; the Ten Commandments law, however, directly impacts kids.
To argue otherwise ignores the unique context of placing religious scripture in public-school classrooms where, “given the impressionability of the young, government must exercise particular care in separating church and state”… It also ignores the self-evident nature of the Ten Commandments: they “command” the reader to follow certain directives. Those directives are largely religious in nature.
As one dissenting judge pointed out, there’s no way to interpret these Commandments other than as a call to adopt a specific version of Christianity:
Texas children will naturally examine these posters and be left to reflect on the fact that one religion—different from the one they observe in their home, their synagogue, their mosque, or other place of worship—was selected to be in their school as a representation of what? An expectation of a model student? A good citizen? A properly devout person? The majority insists that students will not be “catechized,” but forgets their curiosity. Surrounded by the Ten Commandments displays, students will wonder about “the LORD”; they will wonder about “other gods”; they will wonder about “graven images”; they will wonder about “kill[ing]”; they will wonder about “adultery”; they will wonder about “covet[ing]” a neighbor’s wife… Teachers inevitably will be asked to answer these questions, but Texas parents did not entrust public-school teachers with the spiritual education of their children. It is a parent’s right to have these conversations—not inside the classroom, absent their input, but with their children, present at home.
They also pointed out that there’s no way to opt out of this situation. Students may not have to say the Pledge, but they can’t escape looking at these posters.
Stated simply, “the right of parents ‘to direct the religious upbringing of their’ children would be an empty promise if it did not follow those children into the public school classroom”… If schools across Texas must display this scripture, then today our court ordains that empty promise.
The church/state separation groups that filed this lawsuit expressed their disappointment in the decision and announced that they have every intention of fighting this even more:
“We are extremely disappointed in today’s decision. The Court’s ruling goes against fundamental First Amendment principles and binding U.S. Supreme Court authority. The First Amendment safeguards the separation of church and state, and the freedom of families to choose how, when and if to provide their children with religious instruction. This decision tramples those rights. We anticipate asking the Supreme Court to reverse this decision and uphold the religious-freedom rights of children and parents.”
So what happens now, other than the possible appeal?
It’s not clear. The Texas law is back in effect, and districts that receive donations of the posters will be required to put them up. But there’s nothing preventing malicious compliance or other posters (with better moral teachings) from going up alongside them.
Hell, a couple of months ago, a website went up offering well-designed Ten Commandments posters that meet all the requirements of the Texas bill (and ones in other states) that might make Republicans rethink their own law.
But the bottom line is that Texas conservatives have used the courts to tell kids which religion counts—and which ones don’t. They’re sending a message that kids from non-Christian families (or the “wrong” kind of Christian ones) are second-class citizens.
Texas passed an illegal law, made up details about American history to defend their position, practically bragged about their true intentions along the way, and the Fifth Circuit gave them the victory they wanted anyway. It’s a disaster for anyone who believes in church/state separation and a classroom free of religious coercion.
The Christians who are celebrating today’s ruling would be furious if schools put up lists of Islamic or humanistic moral lessons, even though that would be legal using the same logic that the Fifth Circuit is using today, but because they believe their religion is superior to all others, they’re not going to complain at all.
(This is a breaking story and may change as new information comes in. Portions of this article were published earlier)
Please share this post on Reddit, Facebook, or the godawful X/Bird app.
