A federal judge ruled an Arkansas law requiring the 10 Commandments be displayed in classrooms was “unconstitutional.”

According to KARK, the judgment states that Act 573 “violates the First Amendment Establishment Clause rights of Arkansans as a matter of principle.”

“IT IS HEREBY ORDERED AND ADJUDGED that Arkansas Act 573 is DECLARED unconstitutional and the Court PERMANENTLY ENJOINS all Defendants, their employees, agents, and successors in office, and all persons acting in concert with them, from enforcing or complying with Act 573,” the order states, the outlet noted.

“In Arkansas, we believe murder is wrong and stealing is bad – and there’s nothing wrong with our students learning that too,” Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.

“We will appeal this ruling and defend our state’s values,” she added.

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KARK shared further:

The act was passed during the 2025 legislative session, requiring that the 10 Commandments and “In God We Trust” be displayed in every Arkansas public school classroom.

Brooks wrote when issuing the temporary injunctions: “Forty-five years ago, the Supreme Court struck down a Ten Commandments law nearly identical to the one the Arkansas General Assembly passed earlier this year.”

Brooks was citing the 1980 Stone v. Graham, 499 U.S. 39, in which the Supreme Court, in an unsigned decision, declared that mandating the display of the 10 Commandments was unconstitutional.

Brooks quoted the 1962 Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421, court decision in his conclusion on Monday, that “It appears that with the passage of Act 573, the State may have lost sight of the fact that ‘a union of government and religion tends to destroy government and to degrade religion.’”

A group of Arkansas families filed a lawsuit last year to block the law before it took effect.

According to Fox News, a coalition of “multi-faith families” argued in their legal challenge that the display of the 10 Commandments violates their “religious freedom and parental rights.”

“Permanently posting the Ten Commandments in every classroom and library — rendering them unavoidable — unconstitutionally pressures students into religious observance, veneration, and adoption of the state’s favored religious scripture,” the lawsuit read.

“It also sends the harmful and religiously divisive message that students who do not subscribe to the Ten Commandments—or, more precisely, to the specific version of the Ten Commandments that Act 573 requires schools to display—do not belong in their own school community and pressures them to refrain from expressing any faith practices or beliefs that are not aligned with the state’s religious preferences,” it added.

“The state’s attorney general will appeal the ruling, which applies to six school districts,” Arkansas Advocate stated.

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Arkansas Advocate has more:

Seven families of various religious and nonreligious backgrounds filed the original lawsuit last June against the Fayetteville, Springdale, Bentonville and Siloam Springs school districts. They argued that Act 573 of 2025, which requires public schools to “prominently” display a “historical representation” of the Ten Commandments in classrooms and libraries, was unconstitutional because it violated their First Amendment rights.

The Conway and Lakeside school districts were later added as defendants in the case, and U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks previously granted preliminary injunctions in all six districts.

The plain text of the law does not suggest other documents be posted along the Ten Commandments for educational reasons, Brooks wrote in Monday’s 26-page order. That’s because the lawmakers intended the posters to hang in every classroom without regard to the class’ subject matter, students’ ages or other material consideration, he said.

“Nothing could possibly justify hanging the Ten Commandments—with or without historical context—in a calculus, chemistry, French, or woodworking class, to name a few,” wrote Brooks, who was nominated by former President Barack Obama. “And the words ‘curriculum,’ ‘school board,’ ‘teacher,’ or ‘educate’ don’t appear anywhere in Act 573. Accordingly, there is no need to strain our minds to imagine a constitutional display mandated by Act 573. One doesn’t exist.”

The parents challenging the Ten Commandments requirement were represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom from Religion Foundation, as well as attorneys with the Simpson Thacher & Bartlett law firm.

 

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