The case began when Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, sued the district last November. The suit followed a vote by the school board against displaying the posters. Judge Jones set a non-jury trial for next June to settle the case in full. Until then, the order stands.
The district says it will obey. School Board President Anthony Brown said after the hearing that the district will comply. He said administrators must now decide where the posters go, based on how many have been donated to the district. Brown has said before that he disagrees with the law.
Governor Greg Abbott signed SB 10 in late June 2025. Federal litigation over the law has gone back and forth since. A federal judge blocked some other Texas districts from posting the displays in August. The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals later ruled that Texas may enforce the law, finding that it does not establish an official state religion. Other lawsuits are still pending, and the larger fight over the posters is not finished.
What hangs on a classroom wall
Some will treat this as a matter of paperwork and poster counts. It is more than that. A great many Americans know in their bones that a nation which forgets the law of God will soon forget the worth of a man. The Ten Commandments were not written to decorate a wall. They were spoken from a mountain, and they have shaped the conscience of this country from its first courthouse to its last schoolhouse.
It is no small thing that a Texas child may now look up from a desk and read, in plain words, that murder is wrong, that theft is wrong, that a man ought to honor his father and mother. Rules that old and that plain need no committee to improve them. Many have fought to keep that board bare. I would rather see it lettered with the commandments of the Lord.
Now I will say something the courthouse cannot say. A poster has no power to change a heart. A child can read every line on the wall and go home unchanged. The law was never given to make us righteous. It was given to show us we are not. That is why it must hang in the open, and why the gospel must follow it.
"Thou shalt have no other gods before me." (Exodus 20:3)
Notice where the Lord begins. He does not begin with manners or with civic order. He begins with who sits on the throne. Every other commandment flows from that one. When a nation puts something else in God's place, whether money, pleasure, power, or self, the rest of the law starts to crumble. We see the cracks in the streets, in the broken homes, and in the children who have never once been told that they answer to someone higher than themselves.
You and I have broken that first commandment more times than we can count. The law holds up its mirror, and the picture is not pretty. That is the very mercy in it. A man must first see his sickness before he runs to the physician. The commandments say, "You cannot save yourself." Then Christ stands at the end of that road and says, "I have done it for you." He kept the law we broke. He bore the penalty we owed. He rose on the third day, and He offers pardon to any sinner who will come.
So let the Galveston classrooms be lettered with the law, and let no one be ashamed of it. But let every teacher, parent, and pastor remember the purpose. The law is a lamp, and the lamp is meant to lead somewhere.
"Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path." (Psalm 119:105)
Judges will argue this case again next June, and appeals may follow. Those matters belong to the courts, and the office of a judge deserves respect whichever way a ruling falls. The matter before your own soul is simpler and more urgent. God has spoken. His word is written plain. The only question left is whether you will hear it and come to the Savior it points to.