Fifth Circuit Continues Running The Table, Says Ten Commandments Law In Texas Is Constitutional
In June 2025, the Fifth Circuit Appeals Court upheld what would seem to have been an extremely obvious conclusion reached by the federal court handling the case: yes, it definitely violates the Con…
#Texas can require the #TenCommandments to be displayed in #PublicSchool #classrooms, a #US appeals court ruled Tuesday in a victory for #conservatives who have long sought to incorporate more #religion into schools.
It sets up a potential clash at #SCOTUS over the issue in the future.
The ultra conservative #5thCircuit Court of Appeals claimed in the decision that the #law did not violate either the #EstablishmentClause or the #FreeExerciseClause of the #FirstAmendment.
A U.S. appeals court says Texas can require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public school classrooms. The ruling Tuesday by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals was a victory for conservatives who have long sought to incorporate more religion into schools. The ruling sets up a potential clash at the U.S. Supreme Court over the issue in the future. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals said in the decision that Texas’ law did not violate the First Amendment, which protects religious freedom and prevents the government from establishing a religion. Critics have said the law violates the separation of church and state.
Fifth Circuit: Actually, Putting The Ten Commandments In Schools Is Probably Fine
Since the last day of early voting, I cannot help but think about the #Texas GOP's Proposition 10, which prohibits state courts from applying Sharia law. It passed with a 94.81% vote, but I have two gripes. The first is that it is clearly dog whistle politics. The second is that voting *against* it would support something that is patently at odds with the Establishment Clause. It's a good thing I have long stopped watching Fox News.
#Amerabia #dogwhistle #EstablishmentClause #GOP #Islamophobia
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@freedomofpress @FreedomofPress
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How do we protect both freedom of religion and freedom from state-imposed religion?
#FirstAmendment
#ReligiousFreedom
#SeparationOfChurchAndState
#EstablishmentClause
[Editorial] National Religious Freedom Day marks a legal tradition meant to restrain government power over belief. But the 2026 proclamation signals a shift, recasting religious liberty from constitutional protection into a state-driven project promoting public faith and privileging one religious tradition.
#pagan #witchcraft #nationalreligiousfreedomday #establishmentclause #religiousfreedom #separationofchurchandstate #antichristianbias
National Religious Freedom Day marks a legal tradition meant to restrain government power over belief. But the 2026 proclamation signals a shift, recasting religious liberty from constitutional protection into a state-driven project promoting public faith and privileging one religious tradition.
#Myths and #MagicalThinking: #American Civil #Religion, the #EstablishmentClause, and “Codified #Irrationality” in Anti- #CRT Measures
(Excerpt) In Part I, I preview some of the overlapping tensions in U.S. public schooling created by the occasionally competing mandates of education federalism and democratic theory; describe the current state of the law with respect to the constitutionality of state and local governments seeking to inculcate (allegedly) prosocial community values in curriculum; and consider how battles over the meaning of “patriotism” through the decades show that ideology and religion often blend—and still, inevitably, make it—into the public square broadly nonetheless. In Part II, I describe how religion is a useful tool, both descriptively and as a constitutional jurisprudential framework, for handling extremist incursions into the domain of public schools. I preview sociologists’ conception of the American Civil Religion and argue that the anti-antiracist movement, through (among others) its tactical manipulation of national symbols, has emerged as a concerning “sect.” I evaluate the mythological content of an anti-CRT worldview and show how teachers are prevented from discussing factual truths bearing on systemic racism or from communicating, in any way, that existing societal institutions may have played a role in perpetrating and upholding historical injustice. In Part III, I consider whether anti-antiracist curriculum promotes an orthodoxy of “magical thinking,” and what the consequence of this might be for students who are trying to learn to think critically, to make analogies, and to relate their current experiences to their parents, ancestors, and others. Instead, many laws insert nonrational propositions into lessons which demand violating principles of cause and effect—thereby turning the presumably, formerly “secular” space of a public school U.S. History classroom into a “religious” one. Such religious ideology—as I will argue over the course of the Article—may pose unique, heightened risks to civic institutions when imposed or pursued by another name. To make a thriving multicultural democracy a reality, a free exchange of ideas and perspectives is crucial; such exchange is impossible if students and teachers have their expression suppressed and chilled. Eighty years ago the Supreme Court held, in the school setting specifically, that “[i]f there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion . . . .” Since then, the Court has continually reaffirmed that academic freedom is “a special concern of the First Amendment, which does not tolerate laws that cast a pall of orthodoxy
#History, Tradition, and Finding Common Ground: The #EstablishmentClause and #ReligiousExpression by the State
Chicago-Kent Law Review, Volume 100, No. 2 (forthcoming 2025)
43 Pages Posted: 4 Dec 2025
Kathleen Brady
Center for the Study of Law and Religion, Emory University
This article explores what a historically based approach has looked like for the Court’s members in past cases and where the Court may be headed next.
#Government #Religious #Speech and the #EstablishmentClause
#VanderbiltLaw Review, forthcoming 2026
73 Pages Posted: 3 Dec 2025
Mark Storslee, University of North Carolina School of Law
Michael A. Helfand, Pepperdine University - Rick J. Caruso School of Law
This Article proposes that several important strands of Founding-era #history suggest an alternative principle: that the #religious opinions of the populace are not proper objects of government action.
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