One 10 Commandments Bill for 2026

Opinion piece article by Z. E. Kendall

In the 2025 legislative session, two different state legislators proposed two competing Ten Commandments bills for the public schools. It should be possible to combine portions of both of the two Ten Commandments legislation into a single piece of legislation for a simpler legislative process and less confusion for the general public and state legislature on what they should support.

Representative Richard White introduced the 2025 House Bill 116 version of Ten Commandments legislation. House Bill 116 built upon legislation that we had already gotten passed in our law that put our nation’s motto “In God We Trust” in the public schools. It did this by adding the Ten Commandments to the list of historically important documents like “the pledge of allegiance,” “the Mayflower Compact,” and the “Declaration of Independence” that local school boards may allow teachers and principals to post in the classroom and quote from at events. That legislation also states, “There shall be no content-based censorship of American history or heritage in the Commonwealth based on religious references in these writings.”

In discussing this version of Ten Commandments legislation early in 2025, Rep. Josh Calloway recommended that the wording “local school boards may allow” would be changed to “local school boards shall allow,” in order to ensure that local school boards did not attempt to block the posting of all of those documents in the classroom. I agree with that change.

Another change that could be made would be in specifying what “the Ten Commandments” will mean in the law. The Ten Commandments legislation proposed in Texas specified the wording from a particular translation of the Ten Commandments. The benefit for doing this is that it avoids a situation in which people put up parodies of the Ten Commandments and claim that “this is our 10 Commandments.”

However, here in Kentucky, we have a section in our state Constitution against sectarianism in public education, and people may end up seeing it as sectarian if we demand a particular English translation like the New International Version, the King James Version, a Roman Catholic translation, or Jewish Bible translation of the text. So, we want to avoid demanding a particular translation.

But in order to avoid parodies of the Ten Commandments in which the “Ten Commandments” aren’t really from the Bible, we should specify where the Ten Commandments are to be found. So, instead of mentioning simply “The Ten Commandments” in the law, we should say something like, “an English-language translation of the Ten Commandments as it appears in Exodus chapter 20.”

Now, Rep. Josh Calloway proposed House Bill 65, which was the other 2025 Ten Commandments legislation. That legislation would do several things:

1. It would establish that upon receiving voluntary funding, the Ten Commandments shall be displayed in public school classroom

2. It would require that the size of the Ten Commandments display would be 16 inches wide and 20 inches high

3. It would require below the last commandment a note on the purpose of the display, as “The secular application of the Ten Commandments is clearly seen in its adoption as the fundamental legal code of Western Civilization and the Common Law of the United States.”

After the listing of historic documents with the Ten Commandments, the Mayflower Compact and Declaration of Independence, we can include a provision to allow donated depictions of the Ten Commandments to be put in the schools, to specify the purpose of the display, and to specify a minimum size for the display.

So, the resulting legislation could look something like this, with the changes and additions to our 2019 law in bold and underlined:

Local school boards shall allow any teacher or administrator in a public school district of the Commonwealth to read or post in a public school building, classroom, or event any excerpts or portions of:

The national motto; the national anthem; the pledge of allegiance; the preamble to the Kentucky Constitution; the Declaration of Independence; the Mayflower Compact; an English-language translation of the Ten Commandments as it appears in Exodus chapter 20; the writings, speeches, documents, and proclamations of the founding fathers and presidents of the United States; United States Supreme Court decisions; and acts of the United States Congress including the published text of the Congressional Record.

There shall be no content-based censorship of American history or heritage in the Commonwealth based on religious references in these writings, documents, and records.

Each display of the Ten Commandments in classrooms shall be at least sixteen inches wide by twenty inches high.

In small print below the last commandment shall appear a notation concerning the purpose of the display, as follows: “The secular application of the Ten Commandments appears in its adoption as the fundamental legal code of Western Civilization and the Common Law of the United States.”

Schools may accept voluntary donations of Ten Commandments displays that meet the specifications outlined in this section, and voluntarily-given money for Ten Commandments displays shall be made to the State Treasurer for the purposes of this section.

If the Ten Commandments legislation is worded like the above proposal, we accomplish several goals:

1. We keep the legal strength against lawsuits that HB 116 had, through designating the Ten Commandments as a historically noteworthy document without censorship of religious content

2. We improve on the wording that HB 116 had by requiring school boards to allow teachers and principles to post the Ten Commandments as found in Exodus 20, without violating the section of the state Constitution about sectarianism in education

3. We include the additional justification for the Ten Commandments that HB 65 had, when it referred to “the secular application of the Ten Commandments”

4. We keep the ability for people to voluntarily donate Ten Commandments displays and money for those displays that HB 65 had

I encourage Rep. Josh Calloway and Rep. White to get together to make a combined Ten Commandments legislation as a single bill.