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Civil liberties groups representing several families in Texas submitted a legal filing to the Supreme Court on Monday, formally requesting the overturning of a lower court’s opinion from earlier this year that allows the state to require the display of the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom.

Last year, Texas Republican lawmakers passed Senate Bill 10, which requires a poster-sized display of the religious doctrine in every classroom. The law was challenged by families of differing religious backgrounds, including Baha’ism, Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, Unitarian Universalism, and nonreligious traditions. As one Baptist parent involved in the lawsuit explained last year, the law “undermines the separation of church and state as a bedrock principle.”

A federal district-level judge agreed, finding the law to be unconstitutional, in violation of the First Amendment’s religious freedom principles. However, in April, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals narrowly overturned that ruling in an en banc decision, finding that Texas should be allowed to require the displays if lawmakers deemed it proper.

The Fifth Circuit’s ruling doesn’t just appear to ignore those First Amendment protections, but also Supreme Court precedent itself, as the high court ruled nearly half a century ago, in 1980, that such displays as required by states were unlawful. Within that ruling, the Supreme Court noted that the purpose of such displays is “to induce the schoolchildren to read, meditate upon, perhaps to venerate and obey, the........

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