As laws from the 89th Texas legislative session went into effect Sept. 1, Texas students, parents, and educators now find themselves confronted with new requirements that further erode the line between church and state.
Most headline-grabbing – and the law that most explicitly could be interpreted as promoting Christian Nationalism – is Senate Bill 10’s requirement that the Ten Commandments be hung in classrooms, promoting Protestant Christianity in public school classrooms over other religions using state resources. However, Austin ISD so far isn’t impacted by this new law, thanks to a temporary district court injunction. An August federal judge ruling that SB 10 likely violates the First Amendment has exempted Austin ISD, along with 11 other Texas independent school districts, from having to comply with the requirement to display a 16-by-20-inch poster of the Protestant Ten Commandments in a conspicuous place in every classroom.
AISD and those 11 other districts were sued by the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas and parents of public school students across the state, including Christian, Jewish, Hindu, and nonreligious families, in July.
The AISD legal team successfully obtained a dismissal from that lawsuit. Nonetheless, AISD will still follow any injunction related to the lawsuit, including this one that blocks SB 10 from taking effect.
“In light of the court’s recent injunction, Austin ISD will not display the Ten Commandments in our schools,” the district said in a statement on Aug. 26.
On Aug. 22, the ACLU warned all Texas school districts that to hang the Ten Commandments in their classrooms is a risky call. There’s clear evidence that SB 10 is unconstitutional, the ACLU asserts, and displaying the poster could result in future litigation being filed against those districts.
Predictably, Attorney General Ken Paxton isn’t happy about the injunction. On Thursday, he appealed the decision and filed a motion asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit to hear the case. In the AG’s corresponding statement, Paxton goes so far as to assert that the separation of church and state is not a constitutional First Amendment protection.
“There is no legal reason to stop Texas from honoring a core ethical foundation of our law, especially not a bogus claim about the ‘separation of church and state.’” – Ken Paxton
“The Ten Commandments are a cornerstone of American law, and that fact simply cannot be erased by radical, anti-American groups trying to ignore our moral heritage,” Paxton said in a Sept. 4 press statement. “There is no legal reason to stop Texas from honoring a core ethical foundation of our law, especially not a bogus claim about the ‘separation of church and state,’ which is a phrase found nowhere in the Constitution.”
Meanwhile, the passage of Senate Bill 11 allows school boards to dedicate time for prayer and Bible reading (or of other religious texts) during the school day. The prayer may occur in the classroom and be led by the teacher or another staffer.
The new law doesn’t mandate school prayer, but it does require school boards to take a record vote on whether or not they’ll adopt such a prayer policy no later than six months after Sept. 1. Participation in the prayer time would require the consent of the student’s parent or guardian.
Austin ISD does not currently plan on adopting prayer and Bible-reading time during the school day. “Right now, we’re proceeding as normal,” Austin ISD Trustee Kathryn Whitley Chu told the Chronicle. “It is not in my plans, and I don’t see another trustee putting it on the agenda.”
Following efforts this year by the far-right group Moms for Liberty and Project 2025 to remove books with racially diverse and LGBTQ+ characters from school library shelves, Senate Bill 13 will effectively ban books this school year that are deemed “profane,” “indecent,” or “harmful,” defined by vague penal code standards on inappropriate content, opening the door for local and state-level Christian and conservative groups to remove books from school libraries at will.
Secondly, school boards are encouraged to form local School Library Advisory Councils, mostly made up of parents, who would make sure the school board is approving book titles in accordance with “local community values.” In fact, a school district must form one if enough parents petition for it.
Thirdly, school boards, and not librarians, are given ultimate approval authority over school library catalogs. Parents can now also access records of what their student has checked out from the school library and ban them from checking out specific books.
“The bill severely limits students’ access to educational materials that they rely on to learn about themselves and the world around them – putting students at a disadvantage to pursue the lives and careers they want,” Caro Achar of the ACLU said in a statement. “It undermines the expertise of librarians and empowers a small group of unqualified individuals to help control what all students can read.”
Kay Gooch, a retired AISD librarian who now teaches librarian certification courses at UT-Austin, explained to the Chronicle that a librarian’s budget is extremely limited, so every single book is carefully chosen. School librarians hold master’s degrees and are trained in curating age-appropriate library catalogs. The goal is always to obtain books that their specific students want and need.
In the policy on library books adopted by Austin ISD on Aug. 22 in light of the new law, board members made clear that they still intend to provide library catalogs that “present varying levels of difficulty, diversity of appeal, and a variety of points of view.” The policy gives the right to select book titles back into the hands of school librarians and classroom teachers, citing that those individuals are most familiar with their campus or classroom’s specific needs. Librarians will submit their book recommendations to the board, which will, for the first time, ultimately approve them.
“Parents and guardians are the primary decision makers regarding their child’s access to library material,” the policy emphasizes, parroting SB 13’s language. The school district also has to provide a Texas Education Agency form for parents to formally challenge book titles and attempt to remove them from school’s shelves.
Parents have always been able to talk to their school’s librarian about preventing their child from checking out books they view as not appropriate. What’s different now is that SB 13 makes those informal conversations a system that can limit the reading access of other children. “It’s [supposed to be] that parent and their child. Not that parent and their child’s class,” Gooch emphasized.
When selecting books for their school’s catalog, librarians talk about windows and mirrors: books that mirror a student’s own lived experience, and books that will be windows to broaden their knowledge of the world and allow them to learn about other perspectives. Though AISD has adopted the least restrictive version of SB 13’s requirements, the law still paves the way for Christian and conservative parties to remove books from shelves and close those windows for children across the state.
“Your library should be the heart of your school,” Gooch said. “And that’s where every kid should feel safe, and they should feel loved, and they should feel welcomed. They should feel like their reference for everything is in that room.”
This article appears in September 12 • 2025.