Religious schools accepting public funds are required to follow Maine laws that protect against discrimination based on faith, gender identity and sexual orientation, a federal court has ruled.

Crosspoint Church, which runs Bangor Christian Schools, and St. Dominic Academy in Auburn in the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston in January 2025. The state’s anti-discrimination law to free exercise of religion, they said.

Citing several Supreme Court decisions — including one in 2022 that allowed religious schools to be eligible for public funds — the schools argued the nondiscrimination provisions create a “chilling effect,” that results in religious schools being excluded from a state program that allows other private schools to receive public education funding.

In a decision released Thursday, the court rejected both religious schools’ appeals to be exempt from the state’s nondiscrimination laws. However, it remanded a part of the appealed case concerning religious expression back to the U.S. District Court of Maine. Lawyers representing both schools expressed disappointment in the court’s decision, saying it did not honor the 2022 Supreme Court ruling.

“It sort of left the acknowledgement that even though religious institutions can teach what they believe, they would not allow them to then act and conduct themselves consistent with those beliefs,” said Jeremy Dys, senior counsel for the First Liberty Institute, a national religious freedom organization that represented Crosspoint Church.

“That distinction really denies our clients … the full promise of the First Amendment.”

The Maine branch of the American Civil Liberties Union celebrated the decision in a statement for upholding the state’s protections against discrimination.

“Crosspoint Church’s and St. Dominic Academy’s arguments threatened to dismantle hard-won anti-discrimination protections in our state,” said Carol Garvan, legal director of the Maine branch of the American Civil Liberties Union. “We applaud the court’s rejection of those arguments and its defense of the Maine Human Rights Act.”

According to court documents, Bangor Christian’s leaders have said that the school would to admit an applicant who was “openly gay” or presented “as a gender other than the one included on his or her birth certificate.” The school would also likely expel a current student who came out as either. St. Dominic stated it “” about a student’s sexual orientation or gender identity at the time of admission, but objects to school staff facilitating a student’s “efforts to change his or her gender identity” without parental consent.

In the appeals court’s opinion on the Crosspoint case, Judges Lara Montecalvo and William Kayatta rejected the church’s claim that the Maine Human Rights Act’s provisions that protect against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity require Crosspoint to affirm a student’s gender identity or sexual orientation.

They said the act prohibits discrimination against students and staff while still allowing schools to impart their religious message.

“That allows a religious school to “impart whatever religious education it likes,” they wrote. “This includes the message that marriage should be between ‘one man and one woman in a single, covenantal union’ or that one’s gender cannot be distinguished from one’s biological sex.”

That “still excludes religious schools, just through another means,” said Ben Fleshman, an attorney with Becket, the law firm that represented St. Dominic.

Maine towns that do not operate their own public middle or high schools may pay tuition for students to attend another public or private school. To receive those tuition payments, private schools must be approved by the Maine Department of Education and comply with state laws, including the Maine Human Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on religion, gender identity and sexual orientation.

Neither St. Dominic nor Bangor Christian had applied for the program when the appeal was filed last year, because they said doing so would allow the state to scrutinize their religious practices.

But according to Garvan, “any school that chooses to participate in a state-funded education program must play by the same rules and comply with the same state regulations as all other participants.”

“It is critical that Maine retains the ability to prohibit discrimination and advance equality in our state,” she added.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maine Morning Star maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Lauren McCauley for questions: info@mainemorningstar.com.

A federal appeals court next year will hear Texas’ arguments against a ruling that blocked several school districts from displaying posters of the Ten Commandments.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on Jan. 20  both the Texas case and a similar case happening in Louisiana, which was the first state to pass a requirement to post the Ten Commandments in classrooms.

The Texas lawsuit is one of several cases that families of various religious and nonreligious backgrounds have brought forward challenging the state’s Ten Commandments law. Two federal district judges have blocked more than two dozen Texas school districts from complying with the law, saying that the legislation is unconstitutional.

The rulings in both cases only apply to the 25 school districts named in the lawsuits. The attorney general’s office has sued the Round Rock, Leander and Galveston school districts for allegedly not complying with the law as arguments over its constitutionality proceed in federal court.

Attorneys representing the families and the attorney general’s office have argued in court over the role Founding Fathers like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison played in developing the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment, which protects people’s freedom of religion.

Both parties have debated the influence of the Ten Commandments on the country’s legal and educational systems, and whether the version of the Ten Commandments required to go up in schools belongs to a particular religious group. They have also sparred over whether the law reflects an attempt by Texas officials to coerce students into adhering to Judeo-Christian principles.

Texas’ Ten Commandments law was one of the passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature earlier this year. Critics say the law inappropriately injects religion into the state’s public schools, attended by roughly 5.5 million children.

Here are the latest details about the cases against the law:

The latest

U.S. District Judge Orlando L. Garcia on Nov. 18 ordered 14 districts to remove the posters from classroom walls by Dec. 1. Garcia concluded that the law “makes it impossible” for children to avoid the Ten Commandment displays. He noted that districts have a “strong incentive” to comply with the law, citing the state’s against the Galveston school district for its alleged noncompliance.

In August, U.S. District Judge Fred Biery blocked 11 other school districts from posting the Ten Commandments. Biery concluded that the law favors Christianity over other faiths, is not neutral with respect to religion and is likely to interfere with families’ “exercise of their sincere religious or nonreligious beliefs in substantial ways.”

“There are ways in which students could be taught any relevant history of the Ten Commandments without the state selecting an official version of scripture, approving it in state law, and then displaying it in every classroom on a permanent basis,” Biery wrote in his opinion, adding that the law “crosses the line from exposure to coercion.”

Texas appealed Biery’s ruling, sending the case to the same court where a three-judge panel Louisiana’s Ten Commandments law from taking effect. Texas requested that all 17 active judges on the court hear the case, as opposed to a three-judge panel.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas and a coalition of religious freedom organizations are representing the families in both cases. Attorneys had expressed hope that other districts would not implement the law, but they later told the court in a legal filing that many districts are implementing it or have signaled an intent to do so.

Soon after Biery’s ruling, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton called on every school district not blocked by the courts from posting the Ten Commandments to follow the law. Paxton has sued the Galveston, Round Rock and Leander school districts for allegedly not complying. The Leander district pushed back, saying it is in compliance.

The background

, by Republican Sen. of Weatherford, the Ten Commandments to be displayed in classrooms on donated posters sized at least 16 by 20 inches. Gov. signed the law in late June, the day after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found a similar law in Louisiana was “plainly unconstitutional.” The court ruled that requiring schools to post the Ten Commandments would cause an “irreparable deprivation” of First Amendment rights. An Arkansas judge ruled similarly in a separate case.

Supporters argue that the Ten Commandments and teachings of Christianity broadly are vital to understanding U.S. history, a controversial message that has resurged in recent years as part of a broader national movement to undermine the long-held interpretation of church-state separation. Texas GOP lawmakers have in recent years to further codify their conservative religious views, a trend.

“This issue is likely to get to the United States Supreme Court,” Biery, the judge, told a San Antonio courtroom prior to opening arguments in one of the Texas cases.

Biery’s August ruling blocking the law from taking full effect applied to the following school districts: Alamo Heights, North East, Lackland, Northside, Austin, Lake Travis, Dripping Springs, Houston, Fort Bend, Cypress-Fairbanks and Plano.

The latest ruling from Garcia blocks the law in the following districts: Comal, Georgetown, Conroe, Flour Bluff, Fort Worth, Arlington, McKinney, Frisco, Northwest, Azle, Rockwall, Lovejoy, Mansfield, McAllen.

Two of those districts — Arlington and McAllen — are no longer part of the lawsuit but agreed to follow the court’s rulings.

Another group of parents in Dallas during the summer. That lawsuit does not appear to have made any meaningful progress. A judge has threatened to dismiss the case if the plaintiffs do not provide required legal documents to the defendants by Dec. 1.

What are the plaintiffs saying

Oral arguments in the first Texas case,, concluded in August, several weeks after 16 families represented by the religious freedom organizations sued the state over what their lawyers called “catastrophically unconstitutional” legislation.

“Posting the Ten Commandments in public schools is un-American and un-Baptist,” Griff Martin, a pastor, parent and plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in a statement. “S.B. 10 undermines the separation of church and state as a bedrock principle of my family’s Baptist heritage. Baptists have long held that the government has no role in religion — so that our faith may remain free and authentic.”

The lawyers made a similar argument during a November hearing for , the latest legal filing, which includes more than a dozen new families.

In the lawsuit brought by the North Texas parents, the plaintiffs, who identify as Christian, said the law was unconstitutional and violated their right to direct their children’s upbringing.

One of them, a Christian minister, said the displays will offer a message of religious intolerance, “implying that anyone who does not believe in the state’s official religious scripture is an outsider and not fully part of the community.” That message, the minister argued, conflicts with the religious, social justice and civil rights beliefs he seeks to teach his kids.

Another North Texas plaintiff, a mother of two, is worried she will be “forced” to have sensitive and perhaps premature conversations about topics like adultery with her young children — and also “does not desire that her minor children to be instructed by their school about the biblical conception of adultery,” the suit states.

The plaintiffs in the ACLU suits come from diverse religious backgrounds, including families who are nonreligious. Allison Fitzpatrick said in a statement that she fears her children will think they are violating school rules because they don’t adhere to commandments like honoring the Sabbath.

“The state of Texas has no right to dictate to children how many gods to worship, which gods to worship, or whether to worship any gods at all,” said Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which brought the lawsuit alongside the ACLU.

The attorneys called the version of the Ten Commandments in SB 10 a “state-sponsored Protestant version,” which was corroborated by their witness, constitutional law professor and religious history expert Steven Green. They argued against the notion that the Ten Commandments were central to the development of the country’s legal and educational systems, which Green agreed lacked historical support.

The ACLU lawyers have also noted that students are legally required to attend school and have virtually no way to avoid seeing the state’s required version of the Ten Commandments, which they say interferes with children’s and families’ rights. The U.S. Supreme Court has already found public schools’ display of the Ten Commandments , and the attorneys have made clear that only the Supreme Court can overturn its previous rulings.

What the state is saying

The attorney general’s office has argued that the Ten Commandments are part of the nation’s history and heritage, and that previous rulings from federal courts and the U.S. Supreme Court blocking the commandments from going up in classrooms did not examine that historical significance.

Attorneys for the state have noted that the Supreme Court recently shot down the test that courts previously relied on to determine when a government had unconstitutionally endorsed or established a religion. And attorneys pointed out a decades-old ruling in a Nebraska case, regarding a Ten Commandments monument on city property, where an appeals court decided in favor of the monument that displayed the same version of the commandments Texas wants to show in public schools. They relied on that ruling to make the case that SB 10 does not favor a particular religious group.

“There is no legal reason to stop Texas from honoring a core ethical foundation of our law, especially not a bogus claim about the ‘separation of church and state,’ which is a phrase found nowhere in the Constitution,” Paxton said in a recent statement.

The attorney general’s viewpoints were supported in court by Mark David Hall, a professor and author who studies religious liberty and church-state relations. Hall, the state’s expert witness, recently wrote a book that considers how “Christian Nationalism Is Not an Existential Threat to America or the Church.”

Attorney William Farrell from the attorney general’s office described SB 10’s requirement as a “passive display on the wall” that does not rise to the level of coercion because students can choose to ignore the posters if they wish. The law would “probably cross the line,” he said, if it also incorporated the Ten Commandments into lessons or assignments — but that is not the case.

The posters must only go up if they are donated to the school, he further argued, and the law does not specify what would happen if districts choose not to comply. The state views that as evidence that it poses no threat or harm to families, even though Attorney General Ken Paxton recently issued a threatening action if schools do not comply and has sued three districts for their noncompliance.

“SB 10 doesn’t restrict anything,” Farrell said. “It doesn’t exclude anything or specifically require any … participation by students.”

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