Federal judge permanently blocks Ten Commandments displays in Arkansas classrooms

A federal judge on Monday permanently barred several Arkansas school districts from displaying the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms, striking down the state's law as a violation of the Establishment Clause. U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks ruled that Arkansas's Act 573, which required the displays, also violated the free exercise rights of the plaintiffs who challenged it.

Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin's office is not backing down. Communications director Jeff LeMaster said the office is "reviewing the opinion and will appeal."

Good. They should.

The Ruling

Judge Brooks did not mince words in his opinion, framing the law's intent in the most reductive terms available to him:

"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."

That's a revealing bit of reasoning. Brooks treats the Ten Commandments as though they exist in a vacuum, as if a text foundational to Western legal tradition, referenced by the Founders, carved into the architecture of the Supreme Court building itself, has no purpose beyond converting schoolchildren. The "only reason" to display a document that shaped Anglo-American jurisprudence is proselytization. According to one federal judge in Arkansas, there is no historical, philosophical, or civic value worth acknowledging, as The Hill reports.

The ACLU, predictably, celebrated. Senior counsel Heather Weaver framed the ruling as a victory for inclusion:

"Today's decision ensures that our clients' classrooms will remain spaces where all students, regardless of their faith, feel welcomed and can learn without worrying that they do not live up to the state's preferred religious beliefs."

The suggestion that a poster on a wall constitutes coercion tells you everything about where the ACLU draws the line on "welcoming" spaces. Students can apparently survive exposure to every ideology under the sun in a modern public school, but not ten lines of ancient moral instruction.

A Circuit Split Takes Shape

The Arkansas ruling lands at a particularly interesting moment. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld Louisiana's state law requiring the Ten Commandments to be posted in classrooms. Brooks's decision runs in the opposite direction, and the case will now head to the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals on Griffin's appeal.

A split between circuits on the same fundamental question is exactly the kind of conflict that draws the attention of the Supreme Court. Some proponents of the law are reportedly hoping for precisely that outcome.

They have reason to be optimistic. The current Supreme Court has shown a willingness to revisit decades of Establishment Clause jurisprudence that treated any public acknowledgment of religion as a constitutional crisis. The legal landscape is moving, even if some district courts haven't noticed.

What's Actually at Stake

There's a deeper question the ACLU and its allies never want to engage honestly: what exactly are public schools for?

If the answer is education in the broadest sense, the formation of citizens who understand the traditions that built their civilization, then the Ten Commandments have a place in that conversation. Not as catechism. As history. As a text that influenced lawgivers from antiquity through the framers of the Constitution.

But the modern legal establishment has adopted a posture in which religion is the one tradition that must be scrubbed from public life entirely. Students can be immersed in contested ideological frameworks about race, gender, and identity from kindergarten onward. Entire curricula are built around moral claims that would have been unrecognizable a generation ago. But "Thou shalt not steal" on a classroom wall is where the Constitution supposedly draws the line.

The asymmetry is the point. The Establishment Clause has been weaponized not to protect religious liberty but to enforce a particular secular orthodoxy. The same institutions that bristle at the Ten Commandments have no objection to schools functioning as transmission belts for progressive moral instruction. They don't oppose moral formation in the classroom. They oppose the wrong kind.

The Road Ahead

Griffin's office will take this to the 8th Circuit, and the circuit split with the 5th Circuit's Louisiana decision creates a plausible path to the Supreme Court. That's where this fight has always been headed. State legislatures in Arkansas and Louisiana passed these laws knowing they would be challenged. The challenge is the strategy, not the obstacle.

For now, several Arkansas school districts will take down their displays. Classrooms will remain, in the ACLU's telling, "welcoming spaces." Welcoming to everyone, apparently, except the civilization that built the schools in the first place.