The plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit against a new Arkansas law mandating the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools have filed a motion to amend their complaint seeking to add the Conway School District as a defendant.
The motion follows Judge Timothy Brooks’ ruling in Stinson v. Fayetteville School District No. 1 earlier this month that Act 573 is “obviously unconstitutional” and the discovery by two families with children in Conway schools that the district had posted scriptural displays in every classroom. As explained in the proposed amended complaint, the plaintiffs’ attorneys sent a letter to every school superintendent in Arkansas on Aug. 5 informing them of the court’s ruling. The letter warned districts against implementation of Act 573 and advised them that even though they were not technically bound by the judicial order prohibiting the religious displays, all districts have an independent legal obligation to respect their students’ constitutional rights. Conway School District nevertheless pressed forward with posting the Ten Commandments in every classroom, infringing the constitutional rights of students and parents. If the motion to amend is granted, the plaintiffs will ask the court to order that the Conway School District remove these unconstitutional Ten Commandments displays.
“Conway School District’s decision to post the Ten Commandments in every classroom, despite a federal court’s ruling that the law is unconstitutional, demonstrates a chilling disregard for the law,” says John Williams, legal director of the ACLU of Arkansas. “We are monitoring all school districts and will not allow them to get away with trampling families’ First Amendment rights.”
In addition to naming Conway School District No. 1 as a defendant in the case, Friday’s motion to amend the complaint also asks the court to approve two new plaintiff families whose children attend schools in the district and are currently subjected to the unavoidable displays in every classroom.
Signed into law in April of this year, Act 573 requires the Ten Commandments to be “prominently” displayed in a “conspicuous place” in each classroom and library at all public elementary and secondary schools across the state. The scriptural displays must be a minimum of 16 by 20 inches in size and the text of the Ten Commandments must be printed “in a size and typeface that is legible to a person with average vision from anywhere in the room.” The law also mandates that a specific version of the Ten Commandments, associated with Protestant faiths and selected by lawmakers, be used for every display.
On Aug. 4, Judge Brooks ruled that Act 573’s public-school provisions violate both the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment and issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting the school district defendants from posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms. His decision also sounded the alarm against growing state efforts to “experiment” with government establishments of religion: “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.”
The plaintiffs in Stinson are represented by the Freedom from Religion Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, with Simpson Thacher Bartlett LLP serving as pro bono counsel.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to promoting the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters of nontheism. With more than 42,000 members, FFRF advocates for freethinkers’ rights. For more information, visit ffrf.org.
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