The two new Texas laws are part of a broader push this year as Republican lawmakers in pursue bills that bolster the presence of religion in public schools — legislation critics contend violates the Constitution. The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” or favor one over another. Proponents of the policies in Texas and other conservative states have framed the laws as a matter of religious freedom and believe the Supreme Court is on their side. 

On the same day Abbott took those steps to legislate religion in public schools, a federal appeals court in New Orleans found a similar law requiring Ten Commandments displays in Louisiana classrooms was unconstitutional.

In Texas, and throughout the South in particular, the new laws have garnered overwhelming support from the public, the shows. While 52% of adults nationally said they favor allowing teachers to lead prayers that refer to Jesus, 81% felt that way in Mississippi and 61% did in Texas. In the Lone Star State, 38% of adults opposed having teachers lead Christian prayer. 

The latest results are “a lot higher than what we’re used to seeing” among Americans who “want to see the end of church-state separation or public displays [of the Ten Commandments],” Chip Rotolo, a research associate at Pew focused on religion, told The 74. 

Views on Christian prayers in public school, by state

% who say they oppose/favor allowing public school teachers to lead their classes in prayers that refer to Jesus

Note: The blue and orange bars show the confidence intervals around each estimate at a 95% confidence level. In the 16 states with unbolded names, the shares saying they favor and saying they oppose Christian prayers in public schools are not significantly different.
Source: Religious Landscape Study of U.S. adults conducted July 17, 2023-March 4, 2024

Jonathan Covey, the policy director at the nonprofit lobbying group Texas Values, told The 74 he wasn’t surprised by the survey results as people turn to religion as an “opportunity for moral clarity” and to find “comfort and encouragement in difficult times.” 

“The country wanting to see the involvement of religion in civic society, that has been a good thing, and we’ve seen that the Supreme Court has said that the Establishment Clause doesn’t demand a strict government neutrality towards religion,” Covey said. “Actually to the contrary, it’s always been understood that religion has a place in American civic society.”

Texas Values lobbied the state legislature to get the new laws across the finish line. One requires a 16-by-20-inch poster of the Ten Commandments be displayed in every public school classroom statewide. The second allows public schools to provide students and educators time during the school day to pray or read the Bible or other religious texts.  

Jonathan Saenz, the group’s president, called the new Ten Commandments requirement “a Texas-sized blessing,” noting in a statement that it “stands shoulder to shoulder with partner organizations” and is prepared to fight “against any court challenges brought against it.”  

Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a nonprofit that opposes government policies intertwined with religion, over the Texas law requiring the Ten Commandments be displayed in classrooms. The group has against a similar Arkansas requirement signed into law in April. In that lawsuit, seven Arkansas families with children in public schools — and who identify as Jewish, Unitarian Universalist, Humanist, agnostic, atheist and nonreligious — allege the law imposes one religious perspective on all students. 

Meanwhile, a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, considered among the nation’s most conservative, issued blocking Louisiana’s Ten Commandments law. The judges found the requirement to install a Protestant version of the commandments violated the Establishment Clause. 

Constitutional attorney Andrew Seidel, who serves as vice president of strategic communications at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the Fifth Circuit’s ruling made clear that “the separation of church and state is the best protection for religious freedom that we have.”

“These Ten Commandments displays are meant to tell the viewer — the captive kindergartener or third grader or seventh grader — which God is approved by the government, which God to pray to, which religion is correct,” Seidel told The 74. “That is inappropriate for a public school classroom, as inappropriate as it is clear that that tells the Buddhist students that they’re wrong, the Muslim kid that their religion is false, the Hindu child that their gods are fallacious, and the non-religious and atheist and agnostic kids are told by the state they’re misguided.” 

Religion is partisan

Results from the Pew study reflect a political split on support for the separation of church and state. Opposition to teacher-led prayer at school was strongest in Democratic strongholds like Massachusetts and California and highest in Washington, D.C., at 69%. Across 22 states, majorities of adults supported school prayers led by teachers. Opponents were in the majority in 12 states and the District of Columbia, and in 16 states, the share of respondents who supported school prayer was not statistically different from those in opposition. The nationally representative survey of nearly 37,000 U.S. adults, taken between July 2023 and March 2024, has a margin of error of plus or minus 0.8 percentage points. 

Rotolo, the Pew research associate, said he found the regional patterns particularly interesting. While support was strongest in the South, “you see right down the whole West Coast, most people oppose seeing Christian prayer in school.”

Pew , when 46% of adults said teachers should not be allowed to lead students in any kinds of prayers, a practice that saw support at the time from just 30% of respondents. However, 23% said they had no opinion on the issue. The latest survey didn’t give respondents an opportunity to choose “neither.” 

“Just by posing the question differently, we actually see some different results,” Rotolo said, acknowledging that the change could also reflect a shift in public opinion over the last four years. It’s also possible that some respondents who said they support school prayer in the recent survey “may not have particularly strong opinions about this” and may have chosen “neither” if given the option. 

Rotolo said the favorability of teacher-led prayer in public schools was dominant among Republicans, at 70%.  Just 34% of Democrats were in support. Older Americans were also significantly more likely to allow educator-led prayers in schools than recent high school students. 

Support also varied drastically between racial groups. Among Black respondents, 67% supported teacher-led prayer compared to 50% of white adults. Just 36% of Asian Americans were in favor. 

Seidel, of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said he wasn’t particularly surprised to see the Pew survey results, in part because it reflects a “coordinated assault on the separation of church and state right now” amid attempts by lawmakers across the country “to promote Christian nationalism.” 

“Those folks in the minority, whether it be religion or nonreligious, are the biggest supporters of separation of church and state because they know what it is to have a government impose their religion on them,” Seidel said.

Meanwhile in 2023, in the nation to allow school districts to hire religiously affiliated chaplains to provide counseling services to students. As of April, has hired a full-time religious chaplain while more than two dozen others have opted out of the measure. In 2021, Texas lawmakers required schools to display any “In God We Trust” signs donated to them by private organizations, and in 2024, the State Board of Education that relies heavily on biblical teachings. 

The efforts to bolster religion in schools, including in Texas and Louisiana, could again appear before the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority. In 1980, the high court be displayed in classrooms, finding the displays served no secular purpose and ran afoul of the First Amendment. 

This time, Republican lawmakers are banking on a more favorable court makeup. In 2022, the Supreme Court found the First Amendment protected a Washington high school football on the field after games. Last month, an evenly divided Supreme Court blocked the opening of a religious charter school in Oklahoma, which would have been the nation’s first. If Justice Amy Coney Barrett had not recused herself in that case, some believe there would have been a majority permitting the school.

Covey, of the nonprofit Texas Values, said recent Supreme Court opinions have begun to abandon the 1980 opinion against the Ten Commandments displays in Kentucky schools. The court’s opinion upholding the Washington football coach’s right to pray on the field, he said, was “the nail in the coffin.” 

Time and again, I have scoffed at such accusations, pointing out how public school choice policy is wildly different than private school choice policy. The two policies should never be conflated when discussing the merits of education reform policies with lawmakers, though many lazily place both in the same basket. It was easy for me to end that feckless argument by reminding lawmakers I was there to discuss public education reform policies only, dismissing any melding of public and private school choice policies. 

But with the U.S. Supreme Court taking up a in which the Oklahoma Supreme Court has already invalidated the approval of an application by the Catholic Church to open a religious based virtual charter school, I now find myself concerned we have crossed the Rubicon, forever merging public and private school policy while dismantling the foundational belief in the separation of church and state. A hearing is set for April 30.

The proposed charter school, which would be managed by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, proclaims in its application that it would carry out “the evangelizing mission of the [Catholic] Church” by fully embracing its religious teachings and incorporating those teachings “into every aspect of the School.” The school also acknowledged that it would discriminate in admissions, student discipline, and employment, as necessary to satisfy the Catholic Church’s religious doctrine, and that it would not accommodate a student’s disability if doing so would violate the school’s Catholic beliefs.

If one religious organization is allowed to operate a charter school under the umbrella of public funding, other groups will seek similar privileges, creating a patchwork of public schools, each with its own set of religious doctrines, prioritizing their religious mission over the educational needs of all students. 

The profound implications for the separation of church and state, public education, and the future of religious influence in the public sphere is in the balance. If the Court rules in favor of this school, it will not only shift the boundaries of constitutional law but also set a dangerous precedent that undermines the secular nature of our public education system.

Beyond the immediate risks of religious instruction and outright discrimination within a publicly funded space, the ramifications for the separation of church and state could be catastrophic. The Supreme Court has historically been tasked with interpreting the Constitution’s Establishment Clause, which serves as a safeguard against government interference in religious practices and vice versa. By permitting religiously affiliated institutions to receive state funding, this decision could pave the way for religious schools—ranging from the aforementioned Catholic virtual school to the Church of Satan and every religious belief in between. 

This would lead to disastrous consequences where states increasingly entangle themselves with religion, creating a de facto state-sponsored religious system, serving as gatekeepers of what religions are worthy of overseeing public schools and the children who attend them.

Ultimately, the Supreme Court must consider not only the legal questions of the case but also the broader social and political context. Allowing a religiously affiliated charter school to operate within the public education system would set a precedent that we are likely to regret. It is crucial that the Court uphold this principle and prevent the Catholic Virtual Charter School in Oklahoma from becoming the gateway drug I was warned about—before it opens the door to a much more divided and religiously entrenched education system.

This is not a matter of denying the right to religious expression; it’s about ensuring that the public education system remains a neutral space for all students, regardless of their faith or belief. Let’s not forget: The preservation of the separation between church and state is vital to the integrity of our democracy.