Document Type
Brief
Case Name
Mara Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District
Publication Date
9-28-2026
Abstract
No. 26-257
Mara Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District
On Petition for Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
From the Summary of Argument
For more than seventy years, this Court has made clear that a state “may not coerce anyone ... to take religious instruction” or use public schools to “force ... religion on any person.” Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U.S. 306, 314 (1952). For good reason. Doing so advances one of the “true evil[s] of religious establishment" that Founding-era Americans rejected: “the use of government power” to foster “uniformity of religious thought.” Nathan S. Chapman & Michael W. McConnell, Agreeing to Disagree: How the Establishment Clause Protects Religious Diversity and Freedom of Conscience 10 (2023). And in rejecting that goal, Founding-era Americans rejected the idea that government possesses the power to engage in compulsory religious instruction.
Texas’s S.B. 10 furthers those evils. Unabashedly, the law forces state-sponsored religious instruction on children assembled through coercion, requiring displays of the Ten Commandments in every public-school classroom to teach religious truth. That effort to control religious opinion through state-mandated religious teaching strikes at the heart of the Constitution’s protections and defies this Court’s precedents.
Recommended Citation
Storslee, Mark; Meiser, John A.; and Kessler, Meredith Holland, "Brief of Professors Mark Storslee, John Meiser, Douglas Laycock, Nathan Chapman, Thomas Berg, Christopher Lund, Michael Helfand, Steven Collis, Meredith Kessler, Carl Esbeck, John Inazu, Asma Uddin, Christopher Hampson, and Kathleen Brady as Amici Curiae in Support of Petitioners" (2026). Court Briefs. 124.
https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/sct_briefs/124
Included in
Constitutional Law Commons, Courts Commons, First Amendment Commons, Religion Commons, Supreme Court of the United States Commons
Comments
Amici are legal scholars who have published extensively on religious liberty. Amici write to illuminate the important constitutional issues in this case and urge this Court to vindicate religious freedom for all people. Amici’s titles and affiliations (listed for identification purposes only) appear in Appendix A.
See the listing on pages 1a-3a, including Notre Dame Law School's Meredith Holland Kessler and John A. Meiser.
Table of Authorities includes:
Nicole Stelle Garnett & John A. Meiser, Preserving the Exit Option: State Public Education Mandates and Parental Rights in Education, 100 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1709 (2026)