Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
A federal judge has struck down a law in Arkansas that required the display of the Ten Commandments in classrooms, finding it violated children’s rights.
U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks (Obama) ruled on March 16 that not enjoining the law, Act 573, would violate the religious and Free Exercise rights of children in public school.
“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,” Brooks wrote.
“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. 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.”
John Williams, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas, one of the plaintiffs, said in a statement that the ruling shows “Arkansas lawmakers cannot sidestep the First Amendment by mandating that a particular version of the Ten Commandments be displayed in every classroom.”
Brooks had on Aug. 4, 2025, preliminarily enjoined the law in certain districts. It went into effect statewide the day after.
Arkansas officials had argued that the law was legal and should not be struck down.
The act was approved by state lawmakers and signed by Republican Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders in 2025.
“The 10 Commandments aren’t just the foundation of our faith—they’re the foundation of every law and moral code in the West,” Sanders said in a March 17 post on X. “That’s why we are appealing this ruling.”
Several other states have recently enacted similar laws.
A different federal judge blocked Louisiana’s law requiring schools to display the Ten Commandments, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in February overturned that decision, finding that the case was not ready to be litigated yet because there were unresolved questions, including how the Ten Commandments would be displayed and whether teachers would reference them during classes.
Dissenting judges in that case pointed to the Supreme Court’s 1980 decision striking down a similar law in Kentucky.
Lawsuits are ongoing against a Texas law, signed in 2025, that required public school classrooms to feature the Ten Commandments. The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments in one of the cases earlier this year.