On August 20 a Texas federal district court issued a preliminary injunction barring 11 Texas school districts from complying with Texas SB 10 that requires posting of a particular version of the Ten Commandments in every classroom. Five days later, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in a press release directed the school districts that were not defendants in the litigation to comply with SB 10. (See prior posting.) Today, plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against 14 more of Texas' 1207 school districts seeking an injunction barring those districts from complying with SB 10. The 67-page complaint (full text) in Ringer v. Comal Independent School District, (WD TX, filed 9/22/2025) alleges in part:
... [P]ermanently posting the Ten Commandments in every public-school classroom—rendering them unavoidable—will unconstitutionally harm the Plaintiffs. The displays will pressure students, including the minor-child Plaintiffs, into religious observance, veneration, and adoption of the state’s favored religious scripture. The displays will also send the harmful and religiously divisive message that students who do not subscribe to the Ten Commandments—or, more precisely, to the specific version of the Ten Commandments that S. B. 10 requires—do not belong in their own school community, pressuring them to refrain from expressing any faith practices or beliefs that are not aligned with the state’s religious preferences. And the displays will substantially interfere with and burden the right of the parents-Plaintiffs, who are Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Baha’i, Humanist, or nonreligious, to direct their children’s education and upbringing when it comes to religious questions and matters.
Americans United issued a press release announcing the filing of the lawsuit.
