Judge orders Conway School District in Arkansas to remove Ten Commandments displays

LITTLE ROCK — Less than 24 hours after the Conway School District was added to a federal lawsuit challenging Arkansas’s unconstitutional law requiring public schools to post the Ten Commandments, a federal judge has issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) requiring the district to take down all Ten Commandments displays from its classrooms and libraries by 5 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 29. 

Judge allows Conway School District, families to be added to lawsuit

The TRO follows the court’s order yesterday permitting the plaintiffs to add Conway families and the Conway School District to the suit. In yesterday’s order, Judge Timothy Brooks explained: “The Court ruled that Act 573, if put into effect, was likely to violate the First Amendment rights of all Arkansas public-school parents and their children — not just those attending public school in Fayetteville, Springdale, Bentonville, and Siloam Springs. . . . The Court assumed that the State would advise the other 233 school districts of the Court’s ruling and caution them to refrain from displaying the Ten Commandments posters they received until a dispositive ruling was entered or these matters were resolved. Clearly, that did not happen.” 

In issuing the TRO, the court pointed to its Aug. 4 ruling in Stinson v. Fayetteville School District No. 1 that Act 573 is “obviously unconstitutional.” On Aug. 5, the plaintiffs’ attorneys sent letters to every school superintendent in Arkansas, notifying them of the federal court’s ruling and warning districts not to implement Act 573. 

Despite the court’s ruling and the letter from the plaintiffs’ attorneys, Conway School District hung Act 573 displays in all classrooms before the first day of school on Aug. 18, prompting swift legal action from families represented by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas, the ACLU, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP.

Conway School District families get to decide when and how to engage with religion

“All Arkansas public school districts should heed the court’s clear warning: Displaying the Ten Commandments in classrooms is ‘obviously unconstitutional,’” said Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “Families in Conway School District, throughout Arkansas, and across the country get to decide how and when their children engage with religion – not politicians or public-school officials.”