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 requiring the district to take down all Ten Commandments displays from its classrooms and libraries by the end of the day.
The order follows the court’s directive on Aug. 27 permitting the plaintiffs to add Conway families and the Conway School District to the suit. In the temporary restraining 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 temporary restraining order ordering removal by 5 p.m. today, 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 August 18, prompting swift legal action from families represented by the Freedom from Religion Foundation, American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas, the ACLU, Americans United for Separation of Church and State,and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP.
“Imposing biblical edicts upon children in every public school classroom is antithetical to America’s Bill of Rights and respect for true freedom of religion, which necessarily guarantees freedom from religion imposed by the government,” says Annie Laurie Gaylor, FFRF co-president. “It’s quite simple: Our public schools must honor freedom of conscience and may not indoctrinate in religion or prescribe which religious dogmas to observe. That’s up to parents and churches.”
A copy of the order can be found online here.
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 across the globe. For more information, visit ffrf.org.
The post Judge orders Conway, Ark., schools to remove 10 Commandments after FFRF lawsuit appeared first on Freedom From Religion Foundation.
