Topline

A Texas law requiring the state’s public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments could violate First Amendment rights, a federal judge ruled Wednesday, temporarily blocking Texas schools from posting the religious directives in class.

Key Facts

U.S. District Court Judge Fred Biery wrote in a ruling Wednesday the Texas law is “likely to pressure the child-Plaintiffs into religious observance, meditation on, veneration, and adoption of the State’s favored religious scripture, and into suppressing expression of their own religious or nonreligious backgrounds.”

Biery also said the Ten Commandments law crosses the line from exposure to coercion, adding children can be “cruel” to classmates who do not subscribe to the Ten Commandments and are perceived to be “the other.”

The plaintiffs, made up of public school parents and their children, argued the Ten Commandments law violated the Establishment Clause, which prohibits the government from establishing or sponsoring a religion.

The law was signed by Texas Gov.