by Jayla Ward • 2 minutes
First Liberty Institute and Hacker Stephens LLP recently filed a friend-of-the-court brief at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals supporting the display of the Ten Commandments in Texas and Louisiana public schools.
We filed on behalf of 46 members of Congress, including Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Chip Roy
“First Liberty’s recent Supreme Court victories in The American Legion v. American Humanist Association and Kennedy v. Bremerton School District make clear that displaying the Ten Commandments in public schools is constitutional,” said Kelly Shackelford, President, CEO, and Chief Counsel of First Liberty.
“Our religious heritage and the best of the nation’s history and traditions acknowledge the Ten Commandments as an important symbol of law and moral conduct with both religious and secular significance,” he explained. “Government hostility to religion and our religious history is not the law.”
After those precedent-setting First Liberty victories, several states passed laws requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments in schools.
In 2024, Louisiana required them to be posted in schools and colleges that receive public funding; however, that law was partially struck down earlier this year.
In May 2025, Texas passed a similar bill, but a federal judge issued an injunction preventing its implementation in select school districts. The cases were consolidated and will be heard by the full panel of judges at the 5th Circuit later this month.
In the brief, Heather Gebelin Hacker, of the law firm Hacker Stephens, writes, “As Justice Gorsuch warned in American Legion, if individuals could invoke the authority of a federal court to forbid what they dislike for no more reason than they dislike it . . . (the) Courts would start to look more like legislatures, responding to social pressures rather than remedying concrete harms.”
First Liberty is also fighting a major case to stop several radical groups that are challenging the Ten Commandments monument at the Arkansas Capitol. We’re defending the monument as co-counsel with the Arkansas Office of the Attorney General.
In 2015, the state Legislature authorized the placement of the donated monument on the Capitol grounds in Little Rock. Less than 24 hours after it was placed in 2017, a man crashed into it with his pickup truck and destroyed it. A second monument surrounded by protective bollards took its place in 2018.
Despite a Supreme Court opinion concluding that a similar Ten Commandments display is constitutional, the Satanic Temple, Freedom from Religion Foundation, American Humanist Association and the Arkansas Society of Freethinkers sued and challenged the display.
We argued the case in federal district court, explaining that the Constitution and established legal precedent affirm that the monument should remain. We’re waiting for the court to issue a decision.
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