Texas Just Reminded America What Religious Freedom Actually Means

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals just handed Texas a win that’ll make progressives lose their minds for weeks. In a razor-thin 9 to 8 decision Tuesday, the court said Texas can go ahead and require public schools to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms. S.B. 10 doesn’t violate the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, the judges ruled, and honestly, anyone who’s actually read the Constitution instead of just tweeting about it shouldn’t be surprised.

The court’s opinion cut through the noise with remarkable clarity. “S.B. 10 looks nothing like a historical religious establishment,” they wrote. It doesn’t tell churches or synagogues or mosques what to believe or how to worship. It doesn’t punish anyone who rejects the Ten Commandments. It doesn’t levy taxes to support clergy or force churches to perform civic functions. These are the things actual religious establishments did at the founding. This law does none of them.

You know what’s fascinating here? The panic from the left reveals how little they understand about religious freedom. They’ve spent decades conflating acknowledgment with establishment, treating any public recognition of faith like it’s some theocratic power grab. But there’s a massive difference between the government forcing you to worship and the government recognizing the historical and moral foundations that shaped Western civilization. The Ten Commandments aren’t just religious text. They’re foundational to our legal tradition, our concept of natural rights, our entire framework of ordered liberty.

The close vote tells you everything about where we are as a country. Nine judges looked at the facts and saw common sense. Eight judges apparently saw a constitutional crisis in posting “thou shalt not murder” on a classroom wall. That’s the divide we’re dealing with. Half the legal establishment has been so thoroughly marinated in secular absolutism that they can’t distinguish between respecting religious heritage and establishing a state church.

Critics will scream about separation of church and state, conveniently forgetting that phrase appears nowhere in the Constitution. What the First Amendment actually prohibits is Congress making laws respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise. Displaying the Ten Commandments does neither. It’s not a law. It’s not a mandate to believe. It’s an acknowledgment that these principles matter and have mattered to Americans since before there was an America.

The timing matters too. We’re watching public schools fail kids in reading and math while they obsess over pronouns and racial grievance. Maybe a reminder that lying, stealing, and murdering are wrong wouldn’t be the worst thing to put in front of students. Just a thought. Traditional values didn’t become outdated because progressives decided they were inconvenient. They became inconvenient because they challenge the moral relativism that’s infected every institution.

This decision represents something bigger than one state law. It’s a pushback against decades of hostility toward religious expression in public life. The left has treated religious Americans like we’re trying to impose Sharia law every time we suggest that faith has a place in the public square. But the Constitution protects religious freedom, not freedom from ever encountering religion. Texas recognized that. The Fifth Circuit recognized that. And now other states might finally have the backbone to follow suit.

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