Texans have their eyes on a dramatic special session at the moment, but many new laws that passed during the regular session will take effect September 1. This week and next, the Chronicle is rounding up some of the bills set to change our state.
A sad, funny, pathetic exchange occurred at the end of this year’s legislative session. It happened on May 24, as House lawmakers were debating Senate Bill 10, which will require public schools to place a copy of the Ten Commandments on the wall of every classroom in the state.
During debate, Democratic Rep. James Talarico dragged Republican Rep. Candy Noble, co-sponsor of SB 10, into a reluctant acknowledgement that legislators were considering the bill on a Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath.
“Representative Noble, what is the Fourth Commandment?” Talarico asked.
“Keep the Sabbath,” Noble replied nervously.
“So part of keeping the Sabbath holy is not working on the Sabbath?” Talarico asked.
“That is, that is … yeah,” Noble said.
“So Representative Noble, you’re saying that you’d rather tell people to follow the Ten Commandments than follow it yourself?” Talarico concluded.
SB 10 passed the House the next day, on the Christian Sabbath. It is slated to go into effect Sept. 1 and requires posters at least 16 by 20 inches in size to be hung in a “conspicuous place,” with type “that is legible to a person with average vision from anywhere in the room.” Though there are three versions of the Ten Commandments in the Bible, the law requires a specific, Protestant version.
“Public schools and the state of Texas have no place pushing their preferred religious beliefs on my children, let alone denigrating my faith.” – Arvind Chandrakantan, a Hindu plaintiff in the suit
Non-Protestant parents are unhappy with SB 10. Sixteen Texas families joined the ACLU, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation in July to challenge the law in a suit titled Rabbi Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District. The Jewish, Christian, Unitarian Universalist, Hindu, and nonreligious plaintiffs say it violates their families’ right to freely exercise their own religion.
“SB 10 will impose another faith’s scripture on students for nearly every hour of the school day,” said Mara Nathan, a rabbi and parent of a public school student. “While our Jewish faith treats the Ten Commandments as sacred, the version mandated under this law does not match the text followed by our family, and the school displays will conflict with the religious beliefs and values we seek to instill in our child.”
Arvind Chandrakantan, a Hindu plaintiff, worries that the posters would belittle his family’s beliefs. “It sends the message that certain aspects of Hinduism – like believing in multiple paths to God (pluralism) or venerating murthis (statues) as the living, breathing, physical representations of God – are wrong,” Chandrakantan said. “Public schools and the state of Texas have no place pushing their preferred religious beliefs on my children, let alone denigrating my faith.”
Sam Grover, senior attorney with the Freedom From Religion Foundation, said the conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has, for now, kept SB 10 from going into effect. The next hearing on the lawsuit is Aug. 15. Grover added that the U.S. Supreme Court has been less sympathetic to the idea that church and state should be separate in recent years, but has simultaneously expanded rights to the free exercise of religion.
“Our plaintiffs want to be able to dictate the religious or non-religious upbringing of their children, and that’s a free exercise right,” Grover said. “So even in the current court climate, these claims should still win the day.”
UT professor Bruce Wells, an expert on the Hebrew Bible, reminded us that the Ten Commandments arose about 3,000 years ago in a relatively small community with no indoor plumbing and spotty internet access, one which was dominated by the Babylonians to their south and the Assyrians to their north. Half of the commandments, those dealing with murder, adultery, and stealing, are good advice for keeping a society together, Wells said. And then there are the ones about putting no God ahead of Yahweh and not taking his name in vain.
“Those commandments are actually modeled after royal monuments to laud and extol kings,” Wells said. “They sound religious to us now, but initially they were very much political in nature and meant to be subversive of the system that was in place.”
Wells said he sympathizes with those who want students to learn about the Ten Commandments and aspire to be better citizens, but that he’s skeptical SB 10 is the way to go about it. James Talarico, a devout Christian, shared his own skepticism in an earlier debate with Candy Noble last April.
“My worry is that by leveraging our power as legislators to elevate one religion over the rest, especially in front of our children, that that’s the stuff that gives Christianity a bad name,” Talarico said. “I think for those whose goal is, with this bill, to create a new generation of Christians, I think it will actually have the opposite effect. I worry that these kinds of bills will actually create a new generation of atheists who think our religion is more about power than love.”
This article appears in August 15 • 2025.
