(The Lion) — Texas lawmakers are weighing two new bills that would allow prayer periods in public schools and require displays of the Ten Commandments, as a growing number of states are supporting efforts to allow religion in the classroom.

Senate Bill 10, introduced by Republican state Sen. Phil King, would require public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments on at least 16-by-20-inch posters. The bill is similar to a Louisiana measure that is currently tied up in a federal appeals court after it was challenged on First Amendment grounds.

More than a dozen states have publicly backed Louisiana’s efforts in court, and several states have followed in its tracks. In addition to Texas, states such as Ohio, Georgia, and Montana are weighing bills to require – or at least allow – the commandments to be displayed in public classrooms.

The Ten Commandments “are ingrained into who we are as a people and as a nation,” King said in a statement, adding that few documents have had “a greater impact on the whole of Western Civilization.”

King said there is a “fundamental shift in the legal landscape of religious liberty” underway in the country as the Supreme Court in recent years has expressed more openness towards allowing religion in public forums.

Although the Supreme Court struck down a Kentucky statute requiring displays of the Ten Commandments in the 1980 case, Stone v. Graham, King said that decision was “now discredited.”

​​“In 2022, in the case Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the Supreme Court overturned what was known as the Lemon test (Lemon v. Kurtzman, 1971) which was the precedent upon which Stone v. Graham was errantly decided,” King wrote. “The now overturned Lemon test had been used for decades in an effort to eradicate all references to religion from the public square.”

The bill will likely face opposition from Democratic lawmakers and groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, which opposed Texas’ 2023 attempt to mandate displays of the commandments, arguing that it amounted to state-sponsored religion that would force the Christian faith on all students.

Another Texas bill introduced this week by Republican state Sen. Mayes Middleton would require schools to give employees and students, with parental consent, a chance to engage in prayer periods and reading the Bible or other religious documents on school days.

“Our schools are not God-free zones,” Middleton said in a statement. “We are a state and nation built on ‘In God We Trust.’ You have to ask: are our schools better or worse off since prayer was taken out in the 1960’s? Litigious atheists are no longer going to get to decide for everyone else if students and educators exercise their religious liberties during school hours.”

Middleton also thanked President Donald Trump, an outspoken advocate of bringing prayer to public schools, for making the issue a “top priority.” Trump has also backed displaying the Ten Commandments in public and private schools, as well as in “many other places,” writing on Truth Social last year that the displays could be the “first major step” towards a revival of religion in the country.