In Nathan v. Alamo Heights ISD, a group of parents and religious leaders sued several Texas school districts, arguing that the mandate to post the Commandments coerced their children into religious observance and established an official religion. The district court had granted the injunction, relying on a vacated panel decision from a similar Louisiana case and applying the now-abandoned Lemon test.
Writing for the en banc court, Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan rejected the district court’s reliance on Stone v. Graham and the Lemon test’s secular-purpose prong. The court held that the Supreme Court explicitly abandoned the Lemon framework in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, rendering Stone an "empty vessel" that cannot be applied without invoking bad law.
Instead, the Fifth Circuit applied the historical approach mandated by Kennedy, asking whether the Texas law resembles a founding-era religious establishment. The court defined such establishments by their hallmarks: government control over doctrine, compulsory attendance, religious taxes, and the use of churches for civic functions.
The court concluded that S.B. 10 lacks these hallmarks. The law does not compel attendance, punish dissenters, levy taxes for clergy, or co-opt religious institutions for public functions. It merely requires a poster in a conspicuous place, which the court distinguished from the "summons to prayer" characteristic of historical establishments.
On the Free Exercise claim, the court distinguished the case from Mahmoud v. Taylor, where a school district actively sought to disrupt students' religious beliefs. The Fifth Circuit found that S.B. 10 authorizes no religious instruction, requires no recitation, and gives teachers no license to contradict students' beliefs.
The court held that mere exposure to religious language on a wall does not constitute coercive indoctrination. Because the plaintiffs failed to show that the law substantially burdened their right to religious exercise, the Fifth Circuit reversed the district court’s judgment, vacated the preliminary injunction, and rendered judgment dismissing the plaintiffs’ claims.