A new law in Texas requiring public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments is facing a legal challenge from a group of Christian parents. 

Governor Abbott last weekend signed into law Senate Bill 10, which requires every public classroom in the state to display the Ten Commandments on posters that are at least 16 inches by 20 inches. 

Supporters of the measure say the Ten Commandments were influential in America’s founding and are important for students to know. Opponents say displaying them in public schools violates the separation of church and state, and note that a 1980 Supreme Court decision, Stone v. Graham, ruled that such laws are unconstitutional, though proponents of the laws are optimistic the high court’s six-to-three conservative majority will rule in their favor. 

This week, a group of faith leaders filed a lawsuit in a federal court at Dallas on behalf of parents of children who attend public schools. The plaintiffs argue that the law violates the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Some of the Christian plaintiffs say the law is “offensive” for religious reasons. 

A mother, Tiara Cooper, says the law will violate her Fourteenth Amendment right to “direct her children’s religious upbringing.”

“Ms. Cooper is a Christian. However, while she is raising her children with traditional Christian values, she educates her children regarding other religions,” the lawsuit says.

The complaint states that she will “feel compelled to discuss the Ten Commandments” with her young children, and she “does not wish to be forced to have this sensitive conversation … given their ages.”

“She also opposes posting the mandated language of S.B. 10 because she believes that it addresses age-inappropriate religious content. For example, Ms. Cooper does not desire that her minor children be instructed by their school about the biblical conception of adultery,” the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit also states that a social justice advocate, Dominique Alexander, “finds this legislation deeply offensive because the overtly religious classroom displays mandated by the law will promote and forcibly subject his children to religious scripture in a manner that he believes violates his and his children’s civil rights.”

“He views these displays as religiously coercive, usurping his parental role in directing his children’s religious education, values, and upbringing,” the lawsuit states. “He enrolled his children in public school specifically to ensure they receive a secular, religiously unbiased education and have the opportunity to interact with and learn from peers from diverse cultural and faith traditions.”

Two other parents, Bishop Gerald Weatherall and Pastor Shanneca Weatherall, say the law will “usurp their parental roles” in directing the “religious education, religious values, and religious upbringing” of their children. 

“Bishop Weatherall and Pastor Weatherall strongly believe that scriptural matters and questions, including which version of scripture is correct and what it means, are far too sacred to place in the hands of government officials,” the lawsuit states.

The Ten Commandments law is set to take effect in September. Its passage comes as a federal court upheld a lower court ruling that found a similar law in Louisiana is “facially unconstitutional.” Louisiana’s attorney general, Liz Murrill, says the state will appeal the ruling.