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The Exemption They Cannot Reach: Mandated Scripture, Mahmoud v. Taylor, and the Self-Defeating Logic of the Academic Defense

Publisher: Real Safety AI Foundation

Working draft. Not peer reviewed.

Written
June 2026
Version
v3
Pages
13
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Abstract

Texas will require more than five million public school students to read biblical scripture in every grade beginning in 2030. This Article argues that the mandate violates the Establishment Clause, and, more pointedly, that the State’s only viable defense is self-defeating. To escape the Clause, Texas must characterize the curriculum as academic rather than devotional. That characterization, however, simultaneously dissolves any justification for compelling the study of a single faith’s scripture and removes any ground for denying religious families the very opt-out the Supreme Court recognized in Mahmoud v. Taylor. A curriculum cannot be academic enough to survive establishment scrutiny and sectarian enough to warrant a single-faith mandate at the same time. The Article situates the mandate within the denominational-preference rule of Larson v. Valente and the school-scripture line from Engel through Santa Fe, treats the State’s predictable refusal of an evenhanded comparative curriculum as probative of religious purpose, and concedes the realistic risk that a results-driven Court could retreat to the literary-and-historic carve-out of Abington v. Schempp, explaining why that retreat fails on the record. The argument is confined to a specific political project, the legislative program of Christian nationalism, and not to religious belief, religious practice, or the academic study of religion, each of which the Constitution protects.1

Keywords

  • Establishment Clause
  • Mahmoud v. Taylor
  • Larson v. Valente
  • Abington v. Schempp
  • denominational preference
  • religious opt-out
  • public school curriculum
  • Christian nationalism

Plain language slides

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Suggested citation

Gilly, Travis. "The Exemption They Cannot Reach: Mandated Scripture, Mahmoud v. Taylor, and the Self-Defeating Logic of the Academic Defense." Real Safety AI Foundation Working Draft, June 2026. https://realsafetyai.org/research/the-exemption-they-cannot-reach/

Other versions

This paper is also posted on SSRN.

SSRN version

References (21)

This paper cites its sources in footnotes. Each authority is listed once, where it is first cited, with its footnote number.

  1. Footnote 1.Larson v. Valente, 456 U.S. 228, 244 (1982), and Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 225 (1963).
  2. Footnote 1.Mahmoud v. Taylor
  3. Footnote 2.Mahmoud v. Taylor, 606 U.S. 522 (2025) (No. 24-297).
  4. Footnote 2.Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972), and reversing the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
  5. Footnote 5.Sch. Dist. of Abington Twp. v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 225 (1963), expressly distinguished devotional exercises
  6. Footnote 8.Stone v. Graham, 449 U.S. 39, 41 (1980) (per curiam)
  7. Footnote 9.Larson v. Valente, 456 U.S. 228, 244 (1982) (“The clearest command of the Establishment Clause is that one religious denomination cannot be officially preferred over another.”).
  8. Footnote 10.Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962).
  9. Footnote 11.Schempp, 374 U.S. 203.
  10. Footnote 12.Stone, 449 U.S. 39, 41.
  11. Footnote 13.Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38 (1985).
  12. Footnote 14.Lee v. Weisman, 505 U.S. 577, 592 (1992).
  13. Footnote 15.Santa Fe Indep. Sch. Dist. v. Doe, 530 U.S. 290 (2000).
  14. Footnote 16.Torcaso v. Watkins, 367 U.S. 488 (1961)
  15. Footnote 16.Everson v. Bd. of Educ., 330 U.S. 1 (1947) (the state may not pass laws that aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another).
  16. Footnote 17.Kennedy v. Bremerton Sch. Dist., 597 U.S. 507, 534 (2022).
  17. Footnote 18.Mahmoud, 606 U.S. 522.
  18. Footnote 18.Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972).
  19. Footnote 20.Cong. Rsch. Serv., LSB11360, Free Exercise of Religion at School: The Supreme Court’s Mahmoud v. Taylor Ruling (2025).
  20. Footnote 22.Torcaso, 367 U.S. 488
  21. Footnote 26.Lemon in Bremerton, 597 U.S. 507, 534

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