Class action lawsuit — FFRF, others file suit over Ten Commandments
The Freedom From Religion Foundation, along with three other groups, have filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of 18 families to stop all Texas public school districts from displaying the Ten Commandments in every classroom. This lawsuit affects about 5 million school children.
The suit, which was filed on Dec. 2, does not include the more than two dozen Texas school districts that are already involved in active litigation or subject to an injunction from displaying the Ten Commandments in every classroom. It is the first class action lawsuit FFRF has ever been involved in.
“I send my child to public school because I do not want the government to push religious beliefs and doctrine on my child,” said plaintiff Kasey Malone, whose child attends school in Katy ISD.
Despite two federal judges in Texas ruling that Senate Bill 10 is unconstitutional, school districts across the state continue to display the Ten Commandments. With more than 1,000 school districts in the state, a class action lawsuit is the most effective way to protect the religious freedom of all Texas public school children and their families.
Ashby v. Schertz-Cibolo-Universal City Independent School District is the first class action lawsuit and the third lawsuit challenging Senate Bill 10 filed by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, the ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, with Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP serving as pro bono counsel. In all three cases, the organizations represent Texas families who don’t want their children to be forced to observe and venerate a state-mandated version of the Ten Commandments.
“Forcing the Ten Commandments on my kids is indoctrination, undermines my right to guide their beliefs and perpetuates the feelings of exclusion that our ancestors knew all too well,” said plaintiff Mari Gottlieb, whose children attend schools in Carroll ISD.
The class action lawsuit seeks a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction that would stop any public school district not already involved in litigation from displaying the Ten Commandments.
The plaintiff families, which represent a range of faiths and nonreligious backgrounds, attend 16 school districts not named in the previous two cases. The school districts named as defendants include: Argyle, Birdville, Carroll, Clear Creek, Deer Park, Fort Sam Houston, Hurst-Euless-Bedford, Katy, Liberty Hill, Magnolia, Medina Valley, Pearland, Prosper, Richardson, Schertz-Cibolo-Universal City, and Wylie ISDs. These districts span the Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston and San Antonio metropolitan areas.
“It’s imperative to protect a captive audience of public school students, including impressionable children as young as kindergartners, from this zealous crusade to turn schools into places of religious indoctrination,” said Annie Laurie Gaylor, FFRF co-president. “The diversity reflected by the number of religious and nonreligious plaintiffs reveals what a distressing violation of conscience this unconstitutional law is.”
The four organizations filed their first lawsuit, Rabbi Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District, challenging Senate Bill 10 in July 2025 on behalf of 16 multifaith and nonreligious Texas families. U.S. District Judge Fred Biery issued a preliminary injunction in August preventing the 11 defendant school districts from displaying the Ten Commandments.
Despite the court’s ruling that the displays would be “plainly unconstitutional,” some Texas school districts that weren’t defendants in the Nathan case began to display or announced their intention to begin displaying Ten Commandments posters. In response, the organizations filed a second lawsuit, Cribbs Ringer v. Comal Independent School District, on behalf of a new group of 15 multi-faith and nonreligious Texas families who attend 14 of these districts. U.S. District Judge Orlando L. Garcia on Nov. 18, 2025, issued a preliminary injunction requiring those districts to remove the displays by Dec. 1, 2025, and prohibiting them from posting new displays. Throughout this ongoing litigation, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has issued statements instructing school districts to comply with Senate Bill 10 unless a court has ordered them not to do so, and Paxton has sued three school districts to enforce the law.
The defendants in the Nathan case have appealed that decision and the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit has agreed to hear the case (along with a case challenging a similar law in Louisiana) en banc on Jan. 20. The court injunctions blocking the schools from displaying the Ten Commandments remain in place while the appeal is pending.
