Texas Judge Blocks Law on Displaying Ten Commandments in School

A second federal judge in Texas has now halted a state law requiring public schools to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms.

Judge Orlando L. Garcia of the US District Court for the Western District of Texas granted a preliminary injunction Tuesday against 12 of the state’s roughly 1,200 public school districts that are defendants in the case.

Because displaying the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms violates the US Constitution’s Establishment Clause, the plaintiffs are likely to prevail on the merits of their claim, Garcia said. He rejected arguments from the state that the displays steer clear of a 1980 US Supreme Court opinion banning the displays because the Texas law doesn’t require students to read them.

This case is “factually indistinguishable” from Stone v. Graham. The statutes are “remarkably similar,” and, if anything, Texas’ law “mandates more intrusive displays of the Ten Commandments than those at issue in Stone,” Garcia said.

Garcia, a Clinton appointee, sided with 15 Texas families of various religious and nonreligious beliefs whose children attend public schools. They argued the displays are unconstitutional because they require adoption of beliefs of a certain religion at the exclusion of others.

In August, Judge Fred Biery, Garcia’s colleague in the San Antonio division of the same court, granted an injunction against a different set of public schools facing a similar suit. That decision, which the state appealed, will be reviewed by all judges on the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

The appeals court has set oral arguments for January along with a challenge to a similar Ten Commandments law in Louisiana.

The Texas law, which took effect in September, requires a poster or framed copy of the Ten Commandments to be prominently placed in all public-school classrooms, displaying a state-approved, Protestant version.

The families’ attorney, Jonathan Youngwood of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP, argued in court Nov. 5 that Garcia had an easier decision than the pre-enforcement challenge that Biery decided because the law is now in effect and students are being exposed to the displays.

“This is not a case against the Ten Commandments, it’s a case against where they’re placed,” Youngwood said.

The plaintiffs are also represented by American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Freedom From Religion Foundation, and American Civil Liberties Union Foundation.

The case is Ringer v. Comal Ind. Sch. Dist., W.D. Tex., No. 5:25-cv-01181, 11/18/25.