Civil rights advocates on Monday said they asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review a Texas law requiring public schools to display the Ten Commandments, teeing up a case that could set a new national standard for the limits of state-sponsored religious expression in classrooms.
Over two dozen Texas families represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups petitioned the nation's highest court to overturn a split decision in April by the conservative-leaning 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The New Orleans-based appeals court's 9-8 ruling upheld the Texas law, which requires public school classrooms to display a state-selected version of the Ten Commandments drawn from the King James Bible.