Fifth Circuit Cosplays As Historians So It Can Burn Down The Wall Between Church And State

Bold move when they're banning drag.

Apr 23, 2026

∙ Paid

On Tuesday, the Fifth Circuit held that states can require public schools to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms, despite a Supreme Court decision from 1980 saying exactly the opposite.

Cosplaying as legal historians returning us to an originalist Eden, the appeals court stomped on both the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment and the very concept of jurisprudence itself. Henceforth, history is whatever a pack of ideologues jockeying for the next Supreme Court vacancy say it is — actual subject matter experts need not apply.

God on the wall

Last June, the Texas legislature enacted SB10, which requires public elementary and secondary schools to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom. But not just any version! The law specifies that it must be the Protestant rendition, in ye olde English, as laid out in the King James Bible. All day, every day, Texas children must study under the watchful eye of a 20-inch tall listicle in “easy readable typeface” reminding them that “I AM the LORD thy God.”

That’s followed by eleven commandments:

Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven images.

Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain.

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.

Thou shalt not kill.

Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Thou shalt not steal.

Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house.

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his cattle, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s.