DALLAS (AP) — Court rulings are bolstering mandates to display the Ten Commandments in public schools in the U.S. as supporters push to expand the role of religion in classrooms, including making Bible stories required reading for students.
The biggest drive yet to put the Ten Commandments in every classroom began last year in Texas, where a challenge to the law was batted down Tuesday by a U.S. appeals court. While the issue remains far from settled, the ruling was a victory for conservatives who reject arguments that the displays proselytize to students or step on the rights of parents, including families of other faiths.
The law has been met with a mix of enthusiasm and alarm, animating school board meetings and prompting the handing down of guidance to teachers about what to say when students ask questions. Some teachers have resigned instead of hanging the Ten Commandments in their classrooms.
Here are some things to know about the issue:
Republicans in the South have led the way. Louisiana became the first state to pass a requirement in 2024, followed by Arkansas and Texas.
The latest is Alabama, where this month Republican Gov. Kay Ivey signed a law requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in 5th through 12th grade public school classrooms where U.S. history is routinely taught, as well as common areas like cafeterias and school libraries.
Texas' law, signed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, requires the Ten Commandments to be posted in every public school classroom and took effect in September. With the law only requiring districts to hang them if they are donated, conservative groups and individuals began dropping off boxes of posters at campuses across the state as the school year began.
An Associated Press analysis of state legislation compiled by the bill-tracking software Plural found at least 30 measures introduced for current sessions would require the display of the document at schools. The bills were all introduced by Republican lawmakers — and nearly all of them in GOP-controlled states.
Only a few have been endorsed by a legislative committee. There are also bills in some states to allow the display or to require teaching that includes the document.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans reversed a lower-court ruling that for months had blocked about a dozen Texas districts from hanging the posters. In a 9-8 decision, it said the requirement does not violate students’ or parents’ rights.
“No child is made to recite the Commandments, believe them, or affirm their divine origin,” the ruling says.
The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups that challenged the Texas law on behalf of parents said they were “extremely disappointed” in the appeals court's decision.
“The First Amendment safeguards the separation of church and state, and the freedom of families to choose how, when and if to provide their children with religious instruction,” they said in a statement. “This decision tramples those rights.”
In February the same appeals court cleared the way for Louisiana to enforce its own law. That state’s attorney general, Republican Liz Murrill, celebrated the decision in the Texas case, saying it “adopted our entire legal defense.”
The Ten Commandments mandate in Texas is one of several fronts in the battle over religion in classrooms. In 2024 the state approved optional Bible-infused curriculum for elementary schools, and a proposal set for a vote in June would add Bible stories to required reading lists.
In neighboring Oklahoma the former top education official required public schools to begin incorporating the Bible into lesson plans for students in grades 5 through 12, prompting a lawsuit from parents and teachers. Many schools simply ignored the mandate.
Last year the Oklahoma Supreme Court blocked an attempt by the state to have the first publicly funded religious charter school in the country. The case is pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.
The ACLU and other groups that challenged the Texas law have said they anticipate appealing the 5th Circuit's ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Associated Press writers Audrey McAvoy in Honolulu, Geoff Mulvihill in Haddonfield, New Jersey, Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City and Kim Chandler in Montgomery, Alabama, contributed.
FILE - Students work under Ten Commandments and Bill of Rights posters on display in a classroom at Lehman High School in Kyle, Texas, Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Eric Gay,File)
FILE - A Ten Commandments poster and explanation of the state's new law are displayed in a classroom at Lehman High School in Kyle, Texas, Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Eric Gay,File)
FILE - A woman prepares to deliver hundreds of Ten Commandments posters to local public schools in New Braunfels, Texas, on Nov. 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — To the cheers and applause of thousands of BookCon attendees, “Heated Rivalry” author Rachel Reid and director-screenwriter Jacob Tierney walked on to the main event stage at New York's Jacob Javits Convention Center. The two Canadians have been international celebrities for just a few months, and still find themselves wondering if all the noise is for someone else.
“We don’t really get to experience this kind of energy and fandom in person very often,” Tierney told The Associated Press just after their joint appearance, a highlight of the weekend gathering of (mostly) young book fans. “It’s been a bit more of an amorphous online thing.”
Since the first episode of “Heated Rivalry” dropped last November, Tierney's adaptation of Reid's “Game Changer” series featuring star-crossed hockey greats Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov has become a phenomenon that boosted the sport's popularity, made Reid a leader of the thriving genre of sports romance fiction and made Olympic torchbearers out of lead actors Hudson Williams (Shane) and Connor Storrie (Ilya). Tierney expects to begin filming the second season this summer, based in part on the second of Reid's novels about Shane and Ilya, “The Long Game.” The author, meanwhile, is working on a third Shane and Ilya book, “Unrivaled.” Both are scheduled for 2027 releases.
“Heated Rivalry” fans know well the story of how the HBO Max show was born, and of Reid's jarring swing from despair to exhilaration. In August 2023, she learned that she had early onset Parkinson's disease. Days later, she received an Instagram message from a man she had never met, but would soon change her life in a very different way: Tierney.
The 46-year-old Tierney is a Montreal native, former child star and award-winning filmmaker whose credits include the TV series “Letterkenny.” In October, Little, Brown and Company will release a collection of Tierney's annotated scripts, “I'll Believe in Anything: The Making of Heated Rivalry Season 1.”
Reid, 44, is a longtime hockey fan. Born Rachelle Goguen in Halifax, Nova Scotia, she chose her pen name for the practical reason that it's easier to pronounce and remember. She's been open about the impact of fame and her health, posting an Instagram announcement in February that she was pushing back the release date of “Unrivaled” from this fall to next summer. Onstage, she acknowledged it had been “tricky” to write since the series took off.
“I'm in a place where the whole world seems to care about what happens next to these characters,” she said. “I'm still determined to stick to what I've always done when I was writing, just kind of pretend I'm writing for me and I hope other people like it.”
During their AP interview, Reid and Tierney spoke of the joy of sex on the page and screen and how Shane and Ilya just won't leave them alone. The conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.
REID: I really like a forbidden romance. I really like the rivals-to-lovers element. I just also like a queer love story with a happy ending. And I really like hockey, so I think there’s just a lot of elements in it that are just very much what I personally would like. I think if this show had come out and had nothing to do with me, I would be obsessed with it still.
TIERNEY: I did not grow up with stories like this. We don’t as gay men, as queer people. We do not get to have happy endings in media very often. I would definitely have watched it (even if he didn't direct it), that’s for sure. I’m sure I would have had notes. I'm a little picky.
TIERNEY: It was a kind of a series of increasingly surreal and overwhelming moments. And by the time the sixth episode aired, it really did feel like we were kind of at the center of a strange maelstrom. But I also was like, “Am I making this up? Is this actually happening?”
REID: I did a bookstore event the day after the trailer came out. They showed the trailer at the event, and everybody in the audience knew every word of the trailer and was saying it along with the trailer. So that was when I was like, “OK, this is going to be nuts.”
REID: Honestly, I love writing them and I’ve never found that to be the difficult part. I think it might be the easiest part for me. I actually really enjoy it. Not to praise myself too much, but I think maybe that’s why people like the scenes. They weren’t hard for me. It’s not a scary thing. It’s not the part that I have to close my eyes and write or anything. It's my favorite part.
TIERNEY: Sex is a language in this show, sex is a way that we watch this couple evolve over the course of a fairly long amount of time in terms of the story, eight years. And so the sex is different every time, a way of watching them evolve both separately and together. I think sex reveals a lot about yourself that you don’t even intend to reveal. And I find that quite fascinating as a storyteller.
REID: Yeah. That’s why I keep writing books about them, because they just keep talking. With other characters, I’ve written the books and they’ve left. But these guys just stick around.
REID: They're fun to write. I love it.
TIERNEY: It's a coloring book now.
REID: It’s 20 pages.
TIERNEY: Don’t tell the truth.
REID: The thing that hasn’t changed is how much fun they are to write. I find their voices very easy to put on the page. More than any other characters I’ve created, they arrived fully formed. They kind of just appeared one day.
REID: There’s a lot of myself in Ilya, for sure. There’s a lot of, kind of hockey player archetypes — the flashy, cocky European superstar, that’s definitely a type. The uptight, very serious good boy-captain. And there’s been plenty of NHL players from decades of hockey. And I’ve been a fan for decades. And obviously there have been some really great rivalries. And we’re getting probably to the end of the (Sidney) Crosby-(Alex) Ovechkin rivalry right now. But that rivalry at its peak was so fun.
REID: A sense of humor, mostly. It's a little bit mean. I also kind of like to use humor to cover up emotions, you know, things like that. I think I also notice things about people a bit, but maybe stay quiet about it.
REID: I told Jacob I wish I had never met them. (Laughing) It is challenge writing without thinking about somebody having to actually say or do what I’m writing, for sure. I’m trying to just block that out. I just need to pretend it definitely will never happen, because I think that’s the only way I can do it.
RR: Yeah. That book will come out June 1. Hell or high water, it's coming out.
This story has been updated to corrected Reid's first name at birth was spelled ‘Rachelle,’ not
‘Rachel.’
Author Rachel Reid poses for a portrait in New York on Saturday, April 18, 2026. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP)
Jacob Tierney, left, and Rachel Reid pose for a portrait in New York on Saturday, April 18, 2026. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP)
