Update: Federal judge blocks Arkansas law to post Ten Commandments in public schools
Jurist determines that law’s purpose is to illegally proselytize children
A federal judge in Arkansas yesterday issued an injunction preventing the posting of the Ten Commandments in several school districts where parents had sued to invalidate a law passed by the state’s Legislature last year.
U.S. District Judge Timothy L. Brooks’s injunction made final a temporary injunction he issued last summer. The Arkansas attorney general’s office, which intervened in the case, has indicated that an appeal is likely.
In his written opinion, Brooks said that the law “serves no constitutional purpose” and would lead to unconstitutional religious coercion of students and interfere with their parents’ rights to direct their children’s religious upbringing:
Act 573’s purpose is only to display a sacred, religious text in a prominent place in every public-school classroom. And the only reason to display a sacred, religious text in every classroom is to proselytize to children. The State has said the quiet part out loud.
Technically, the ruling applies only to the school districts where the parents who filed the school districts lived when they filed the lawsuit: Bentonville School District No. 6, Conway School District, Fayetteville School District No. 1, Lakeside School District No. 9, Siloam Springs School Dist. No. 21 and Springdale School District No. 50. The practical effect of the ruling, however, is to prevent the posting of the Ten Commandments throughout the jurisdiction of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas.
Similar recent laws are on the books in Louisiana and Texas. So far, none have been approved by courts.
Original article (Aug. 25, 2025): Judge blocks some Arkansas schools from following Ten Commandments law
Calling a new Arkansas law requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments in public schools an “obviously unconstitutional” attempt to inject Christian doctrine into the school system, a federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction preventing some of the state’s largest school districts from complying with that law.
The ruling was made by U.S. District Judge Timothy L. Brooks, a Barack Obama appointee.
Arkansas this year became the second state, after Louisiana, to require the posting of a highly abridged version of the Ten Commandments in public-school classrooms. Louisiana’s law has been called unconstitutional by a federal judge, a decision that is being appealed. Since Louisiana and Arkansas passed their laws, Texas lawmakers have passed a similar law. Opponents of the Texas law have filed a lawsuit to prevent its enforcement, although no ruling has been made.
Technically, the Arkansas ruling applies only to those school districts that were named as defendants in a lawsuit filed by parents in seven families. They are the Fayetteville, Springdale, Bentonville and Siloam Springs school districts. It is unclear if other districts in the state will comply with the new law or if further legal action will be taken to prevent that.
Brooks’ ruling on the new law was unequivocal:
Why would Arkansas pass an obviously unconstitutional law? Most likely because the State is part of a coordinated strategy among several states to inject Christian religious doctrine into public-school classrooms.
And while the school districts claimed that lawmakers had secular reasons for passing the Ten Commandments mandate, Brooks wasn’t buying that:
Act 573 is not neutral with respect to religion. By design, and on its face, the statute mandates the display of expressly religious scripture in every public-school classroom and library. The Act also requires that a specific version of that scripture be used, one that the uncontroverted evidence in this case shows is associated with Protestantism and is exclusionary of other faiths.
Brooks based his ruling primarily on the obvious Supreme Court precedents dating back more than half a century: Engele v. Vitale, the 1962 ruling invalidating teacher-led prayers in public schools; 1963’s Abingdon School District v. Schempp, invalidating a Pennsylvania law requiring daily Bible readings in public schools; and, most importantly, 1980’s Stone v. Graham striking a Kentucky law similar to the one passed in Arkansas.
While a series of Supreme Court decisions in recent years have seemed to weaken prohibitions affecting the influence of religion on public education, Brooks found that the reasoning of the more recent decisions does not invalidate the basis of the high court rulings in Stone and the earlier cases.
“The case begins and ends with Stone,” Brooks said in his written opinion. While the school districts argued that the 2022 Kennedy v. Bremerton School District decision, one allowing a high school football coach to publicly pray after football games, supported their case, Brooks disagreed:
Kennedy does not alter the reasoning and outcome of Stone — or even mention the case. The Kennedy Court explicitly acknowledged that state-mandated religious displays and practices in the public-school setting are subject to special treatment because public-school children are a captive audience.
And while the Supreme Court in some recent cases has looked to earlier historical practices to understand how to interpret various clauses in the U.S. Constitution, Brooks found that there is “insufficient evidence” of using the Ten Commandments in public education, and that “there is no tradition of permanently displaying the Ten Commandments in public-school classrooms.”
Brooks also cited Mahmoud v. Taylor, a case from this year in which the Supreme Court recognized the freedom-of-religion rights of parents to withhold their children from classes in which certain pro-LGTBQ books would be read. Brooks noted that Mahmoud acknowledged “heightened concerns with protecting freedom of conscience from subtle coercive pressure in the elementary and secondary public schools.”
The school districts and the state attorney general’s office, which intervened in the case, are considering an appeal. Arkansas news media quoted the AG, Tim Griffin, as saying: “I am reviewing the court’s order and assessing our legal options.”