Texas judge forces Galveston school district to display Ten Commandments posters
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Nearly a year after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued a school district for not obeying the state’s illegal Christian demand to put up posters of the Ten Commandments in every classroom, a Republican judge has ordered the district to put them up by the end of this week. It caps a legal fight that’s been going on for nearly a year, though the broader fight over whether those posters can be put up in public school classrooms is still raging.
A quick recap: Last year, Texas passed a bill to post the Decalogue in public schools—King James’ Version only.
There was a federal lawsuit over the matter, which the anti-Ten Commandments side won, but the ultra-conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals voted 9-8 to reverse that ruling. We’ll find out this month if the Supreme Court will hear the case.
In the meantime, Galveston ISD voted 4-3 last year against putting up the signs. As one news outlet described it, the board members said the posters “were unconstitutional and could make Christian students feel superior while ostracizing others, burden teachers with explaining religious texts, coerce children to become Christian and expose students to mature themes such as adultery.”
In light of the legal developments, though, they were in a bind. The courts were forcing them to comply even though doing so violated their own mission to do what’s best for students. That’s why their attorneys urged State District Court Judge Jeth Jones to let this play out—with a potential Supreme Court case looming.
Jones sided with Paxton instead, saying the district must put up the Ten Commandments posters within 10 days of his decision.
The district said they would comply… even though they really didn’t want to.
After Thursday’s hearing, Galveston ISD School Board President Anthony Brown said the district will comply and will have to decide where to place the posters based on how many have been donated to the district. Brown has previously stated that he doesn’t agree with the new state law.
“Our mission is to educate kids, and we have three-quarters of our kids come from families below the poverty line. We have a lot of work to do,” Brown said. “I think this is a distraction, and it’s a constitutional issue … It’s important, but I want to be focusing on our kids, and this does not do that.”
The Ten Commandments are not important. At best, this law is pointless, and at worst, it actively harms children. It’s also a reminder that Republicans are more interested in shoving performative religion in kids’ faces than doing anything to actually improve their lives. But you can’t blame the district for not fighting this any more right now—it’s them against a horde of powerful right-wing entities.
One school board member essentially said as much during a recent board meeting:
At a September 23 school board meeting, multiple school board trustees expressed their disagreement with SB 10.
“It absolutely advocates one religion in our public education system over all other religions,” trustee Ann Masel said. “Perhaps a better use of our legislators’ time and money would be spent on assisting public education and its job of teaching children math, reading and writing and supporting those teachers entrusted with that calling.”
Masel added that although she doesn’t agree with the current law or its interpretation, she will follow it.
Masel added:
“I am vehemently opposed to posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms,” Masel said. “It pains me that I am forced to make what I consider the legal decision. Unfortunately, the reality of life is that sometimes the bully’s voice has more control than a moral voice.”
That’s Texas in a nutshell right there: They’re all about rugged individuality and freedom, but a majority of voters elect Republicans to statewide offices, who then screw over the state by taking away their freedoms, leaving individuals to pick up the pieces of the messes they leave behind.
Back in September, Christian Nationalist State Sen. Mayes Middleton donated Ten Commandments posters to Galveston ISD because the law required the district to “accept any offer of a privately donated poster or framed copy of the Ten Commandments.”
Now that the district says it’ll comply with the judge’s ruling, he took a victory lap:
“Our laws are not optional or suggestions,” Middleton said. “GISD thought they were, and were rightfully ordered to follow the law and display the 10 Commandments posters. Additionally, this episode highlights the absurdity of the district’s argument that the Ten Commandments are somehow harmful and should not be displayed. Don’t lie, don’t kill, don’t steal — these are things students should learn.”
Middleton, a racist who’s running to replace Paxton as attorney general, gives away the game by what he says there. Notice how he only highlights the commandments that aren’t religious because even he knows how important it is to pretend the first four Commandments don’t exist so that he can push his religion onto the children of Jewish and Muslim and non-religious parents.
To an extent, anyway. Galveston school board President Anthony Brown said that Middleton didn’t donate enough posters to cover every classroom in the district. They’ll put up the ones they received and move on. Whether malicious compliance will occur in any of those classrooms remains to be seen.
When the district chose not to put up Middleton’s posters last year, waiting for the federal courts to rule on this first, Paxton sued them, saying in a press release that the district was essentially denying the country’s Christian heritage (which is a lie) and refusing to obey the law (which they were also not doing).
“America is a Christian nation, and it is imperative that we display the very values and timeless truths that have historically guided the success of our country,” said Attorney General Paxton. “By refusing to follow the law, Galveston ISD chose to both blatantly ignore the Legislature and also ignore the legal and moral heritage of our nation.”
…
Attorney General Paxton further stated that, “There is no valid legal basis to prevent Texas schools from honoring a foundational framework of our laws, especially under the misconception that a ‘separation of church and state’ phrase appears in the Constitution. It does not.”
Paxton was deliberately lying about the law because he’s a conservative Christian, so honesty doesn’t play any role in his moral philosophy. (Just ask his wife.) As any legal scholar or middle schooler can tell you, while the exact phrase “separation of church and state” doesn’t appear in the Constitution, that’s what the Establishment Clause means. That’s what court after court has affirmed for generations. Conservative Christians want to play a semantic game because they’re well aware that the law isn’t on their side. The only way they can spread their faith is through force, which tells you a lot about how little confidence they have in the persuasive power of the Bible itself.
So this is where we’re at now: Instead of doing anything to improve education, Republicans and their lapdog judges are forcing their religion into classrooms. It’s not enough that they whitewash history; they won’t rest under they replace actual education with Sunday School.
This isn’t even about the Ten Commandments anymore. It’s about control. Republicans want to turn schools into pulpits, forcing teachers and students to publicly affirm a theology many of them don’t share. That’s how insecure their party is. Unable to win people over with their ideas, they’re rigging maps and weaponizing children’s education to prop up their own crumbling moral authority.
(Portions of this article were published earlier)
Idaho’s attorney general gave churches a dark-money loophole to fight abortion rights
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Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador, a Republican, says it’s perfectly legal for churches to spend their general funds on political campaigns while shielding the names of the individual donors who contributed to the funds. If applied, the move would create a dark money funnel, helping conservatives prop up their preferred candidates and ballot measures. The churches and their spending would still be disclosed but not the donors themselves.
The result is a dark-money loophole especially useful to right-wing religious organizations.
The deeply red state is currently considering a citizen-led ballot measure known as Proposition 1, the Reproductive Freedom and Privacy Act. Generally speaking, if it gets enough “Yes” votes, Idahoans could restore some of their reproductive freedom and privacy rights. They could access abortion, at least until the point of fetal viability. The state (generally speaking) couldn’t interfere with decisions about contraception or fertility treatments unless a restriction was narrowly tailored to protect the patient’s health. If the “No” side wins, Idaho’s near-total abortion ban would remain in place, though a recent federal injunction currently limits its enforcement in certain serious-health situations.
It’s really a question of who should control a woman’s body: Women and their doctors… or Republicans.
As the election draws near, Idaho Secretary of State Phil McGrane asked Labrador for a formal assessment of whether churches could spend money supporting or opposing ballot initiatives like this one without having to reveal the names of the individuals who gave them money.
Labrador responded by saying not only could churches donate, they could keep their individual donors secret. But only if they did it a certain way.
As it stands, Idaho’s (pro-transparency) Sunshine Law says a non-business entity— including a church—that spends over $1,000 in a calendar year for a candidate or ballot measure must report that to the secretary of state. That report must include the names of people who gave the group over $500 during either of the previous two calendar years, or who promised more than $500 this calendar year. If the groups don’t do this, they could receive a fine and possible criminal penalties.
The concern for some conservative churches is that they want to give money to oppose Prop 1, but they don’t want to reveal the names of their donors. Isn’t forcing them to do that a violation of the state’s Free Exercise of Religion Protected Act (FERPA)? In other words, they say it violates their religious freedom to make them disclose their donors. What should take precedence: Their religious freedom or campaign finance laws?
Labrador tries to reconcile the difference by saying churches have to play by the rules if they’re raising money specifically for a ballot measure.
But if they simply use money from their “general funds” to support those campaigns… then they don’t have to say anything about their individual donors. To put that another way, if church leaders use money from a Giant Pool of Tithes to oppose Prop 1, then Labrador says they don’t need to disclose anything about who contributed or how much they gave. It would be the church donating to the cause, not individuals.
One University of Idaho law professor said this “advice” effectively creates a loophole for churches that want to hide their donors’ names: A donor could give a large bag of money to a church as an unrestricted tithe, even while expecting the church will spend part of its general fund on the donor’s preferred campaign(s). Unless the state can prove the donation was intended for a specific campaign, the donor’s identity could remain hidden.
“You can imagine a church saying, ‘Well, we’re worried about disclosing who gives money through regular donations, tithes, what have you, because if we disclose, people may stop giving us money.’ They don’t want to be outed or publicized,” [University of Idaho law professor Richard] Seamon said. “They are a church, and they are exercising their religion when they undertake to oppose or support these measures,” he said.
Seamon also said some people worry the opinion could create a path around campaign finance disclosure rules.
“People may try to get around the limits on disclosing donations directly to support measure, by almost laundering them through churches—giving them to churches with the expectation that the churches will use that money in turn for these electioneering purposes,” Seamon said.
This is not technically a Johnson Amendment issue. That federal restriction concerns intervention in candidate elections; advocacy for ballot measures is generally treated as lobbying. The scandal here is narrower but still serious. Labrador wants churches to spend their general funds influencing ballot measures while concealing the identities of donors who supplied those funds.
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Boise has already given $2,000 to the anti-Prop 1 campaign, and when a reporter reached out to them for comment about this advice, the response from Church lobbyist Christian Welp was straight out of the MAGA playbook: Dodge the question entirely, attack the messenger, and complain about the other side:
“I would love to see a story from you guys about the nearly $2 million Idahoans for Women and Family took in just yesterday. $250,000 from billionaire Michael Bloomberg. $650,000 from some big PAC out of DC. I think that is far more news worthy than the Catholic Church in Idaho wanting to weigh in on abortion in Idaho.”
The Catholic Church in Idaho is, of course, free to oppose abortion rights. That’s not the issue here. Welp avoided the question of whether the Catholic Church should be allowed to spend money on a political campaign while covering up the donors who made it possible.
(In case you’re wondering, the side supporting reproductive freedom has raised twice as much money as the anti-choice zealots on the other side—$5 million to $2.5 million, roughly, as of September 29.)
As Boise Public Radio explained, lawmakers considered a bill that would have exempted religious organizations from donor-disclosure requirements as long as their ballot-measure spending remained below 10% of their total receipts from the previous year. That bill died in committee. But if it passed, it would have allowed the Catholic Church in Boise to donate up to $2.3 million for campaigns like Prop 1 due to its $23.2 million in revenue in 2025—and they wouldn’t have had to disclose anything about their donors.
Labrador’s opinion doesn’t even have a comparable 10% ceiling.
Former Idaho attorney general and longtime justice of the Idaho Supreme Court Jim Jones wrote an opinion piece for the Idaho Statesman denouncing Labrador’s insane advice:
The opinion does not provide any criteria for determining how central abortion is to the church’s religious beliefs or even how to categorize Prop 1 as a religious issue rather than a secular issue. The opinion would allow out-of-state interest groups to funnel tons of money through those churches into the campaign against Prop 1, without voters learning of their identity.
Jones points out that Labrador has only issued seven opinions like this one over the past four years, and three of them involved abortion, implying that Labrador is more interested in pushing a pet right-wing cause rather than clarifying confusing laws.
He also called out the ridiculous idea that transparency laws would burden churches:
The Sunshine Law requires all recipients of political donations to disclose the identity of their donors so as to prevent dark money contributors from corrupting Idaho elections. The reporting requirement applies to all entities that use donor money to influence the vote on political candidates or ballot measures. The requirement is neutral and universally applicable. It does not target religious groups. It does not substantially burden churches that choose to funnel money to political causes. It is the least restrictive means for identifying who is trying to influence elections.
…
We are now faced with the prospect of having a dark money group anonymously dump a ton of money into the coffers of some sort of church and use it to publicly hammer the Prop 1 initiative.
This is what Labrador and his religious allies want: the freedom to spend money influencing elections without letting voters see who funded them. They’ll go out of their way to circumvent any laws that might allow the public to realize how they’re being screwed over.
This may be the bigger scandal: Idaho lawmakers considered a similar religious exemption and rejected it. Labrador’s office is now trying to produce the same result through a shady legal interpretation.
Labrador insists this isn’t a dark money funnel because earmarked political donations would still have to be disclosed and churches still have to identify themselves (if not their individual donors). But that supposed safeguard depends entirely on the state proving what a donor intended when the check was written. A wealthy activist could give a church an ostensibly unrestricted donation, the church could spend its general funds attacking Proposition 1, and voters would see only the church’s name—not the person who supplied the money.
Labrador wants to transform that statutory disclosure obligation into a special privilege for religious organizations, one that conservative churches opposing Prop 1 are already well-positioned to exploit.
Illinois district removes religious Facebook post (October 2026)
Tags:Freedom From Religion Foundation, Politics, Religion
The Brussels CUSD 42 school district in Illinois removed an explicitly Christian Easter message from the district’s official Facebook page after FFRF intervened.
A concerned community member informed FFRF that the school district posted on Facebook an Easter message that states, “Happy Easter to our Brussels CUSD school community! This season of renewal reminds us of the hope, strength and promise found in new beginnings. As we reflect on the meaning of this time, we are grateful for the students, families, staff and community members who make our school such a supportive and caring place.”
The post included a praying hands emoji, as well as a photo which included imagery of Christian crosses and the tomb from which Christians believe Jesus emerged on Easter Sunday.
“The district should strive to remain welcoming and inclusive of all students and families in all aspects, including its official social media accounts, regardless of which religion students and families do or do not believe in,” FFRF Staff Attorney Madeline Ziegler wrote to the district.
After receiving FFRF’s letter, the district removed the post, according to Superintendent Pam Long in an email.
The post Illinois district removes religious Facebook post (October 2026) appeared first on Freedom From Religion Foundation.
