When Houston ISD students return to school on Aug. 10, it could be the first time students and teachers will have the Ten Commandments displayed in classrooms, after the district was embroiled in lawsuits over a Texas law requiring their display and it was upheld in the spring by a federal appeals court.
But now, three Houston-area mothers are trying to stop the 2025 law from a new legal perspective: Rather than rely on the U.S. Constitution's protections for freedom of religion, they argue the display of the Ten Commandments violates Texas' own laws.
In a new lawsuit filed Thursday in Harris County, those three mothers — Sanjam Kaur Sohal, Dr. Audrey Rosa Nath and Emily Roth — are suing the state as well as Houston ISD, Cy-Fair ISD and Spring Branch ISD over that argument.
In 1999, the Texas legislature passed a bill, signed into law by then-Gov. George W. Bush, which prohibited the state government and public entities from "substantially burden[ing] a person's free exercise of religion.” That provision, known as the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act, has been cited as recently as 2021, whenAttorney General Ken Paxton used it as evidencethat governments could not close places of worship during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It cannot be something that is only done when it advances a Christian agenda, to the exclusion of every other religious background of the citizens and students of Texas,” Vanessa D. Gilmore, a former district court judge and one of the plaintiffs’ lawyers, told Houston Public Media.
Sohal, Nath and Roth argue the same standard should hold for, as they say, imposing the Ten Commandments on their children. The version of the commandments required to be displayed, if schools receive them as a donation, is the Protestant version from the King James Bible.
The plaintiffs also argue that displaying the Ten Commandments in schools violates a recent amendment to the Texas Constitution — passed by state lawmakers last spring and then by voters in November — that affirms parents’ rights related to their children’s education.
“There’s that commandment saying you shouldn’t have imagery or statues or whatever and no other gods than me,” Nath, whose family adheres to Jainism, Hinduism, Judaism and Quakerism, told Houston Public Media. “That’s telling my son that there’s something wrong with him for celebrating his grandpa’s Hinduism. And it’s not just my son, but for all the other kids who come from such a diversity of religions in my kids’ classes.”
Representatives from the Office of Attorney General, the Texas Education Agency, Houston ISD, Cy-Fair ISD and Spring Branch ISD, all of which are defendants in the lawsuit, did not immediately return requests for comment.
Prior lawsuits over the Texas law had focused on federal precedent for freedom of religion, rather than state-level laws. Earlier this year, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the law did not violate the U.S. Constitution.
The lawsuit filed Thursday does not have a hearing scheduled. The plaintiffs are asking for a temporary restraining order against the three districts from displaying the Ten Commandments before their school years begin next month.
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