78 | Lemons and Stones: The Ten Commandments are Back in Classrooms…Live from the McCarthy Institute

Can a state require public schools to post the Ten Commandments in every classroom? In this episode, recorded live at the Martha McCarthy Education Law & Policy Institute, we unpack Nathan v. Alamo Heights, the Fifth Circuit’s decision upholding Texas’s law requiring public elementary and secondary schools to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom. The case revisits an issue we first explored in connection with Louisiana’s similar law, but this time against a rapidly changing constitutional landscape shaped by the Supreme Court’s decisions in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District and Mahmoud v. Taylor.We explore why the Fifth Circuit concluded that the Supreme Court’s 1980 decision in Stone v. Graham is no longer controlling, how the court applied the Supreme Court’s new history-and-tradition approach to the Establishment Clause, and why it determined that displaying the Ten Commandments does not resemble a founding-era establishment of religion. We also examine the families’ Free Exercise Clause argument under Mahmoud, the court’s distinction between religious curriculum and a religious text displayed on a classroom wall, and the sharply contested question of coercion in public schools. Nathan illustrates just how dramatically the legal framework governing religion in schools is shifting—and how many questions remain unresolved.Check out our updated website (www.chalkandgavel.com) to sign up for our newsletter, support the show, find our episode database, and grab some merch. Interested in staying up to date on education law as an educator? Check out ELA's publication, Law and Policy in Schools, at www.educationlaw.org/lapis.Chalk & Gavel is supported by the Martha McCarthy Education Law & Policy Institute at Indiana University’s School of Education. The McCarthy Institute offers virtual and in-person programming to increase legal literacy. Educators, school leaders, attorneys, policymakers, professors, and others are invited to participate in interactive discussions related to contemporary issues in education law. To learn more, visit https://education.indiana.edu/events/conferences/mccarthy-institute/index.html#EducationLaw#EducationLaw #SchoolLaw #TenCommandments #ReligiousFreedom #FirstAmendment