Arkansas public schools enroll upwards of 470,000 students. These students and their families adhere to an array of faiths, and many do not practice any religion at all. Yet a newly enacted Arkansas law, Act 573, seeks to impose one religious perspective on all Arkansas schoolchildren by requiring Arkansas public schools to post the Ten Commandments in every classroom. Under Act 573, public-school students will be forcibly subjected to scriptural dictates, day in and day out. Children of all faiths will be told through these displays “I am the Lord thy God” and “Thou shalt have no other gods before me”—leaving many of them excluded and uncomfortable in their own classrooms.
On June 11, 2025, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Arkansas Civil Liberties Union, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, and Simpson Thacher Bartlett LLP filed a lawsuit in the Western District of Arkansas on behalf of a multifaith group of seven families with children in Arkansas public schools. The plaintiffs, who are Jewish, Unitarian Universalist, and non-religious, assert that Act 573 is a violation of the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment.
Our suit argues that, through Act 573, Arkansas is adopting an official religious text and taking an official position on religious issues in clear violation of the Establishment Clause’s guarantee of separation of church and state. Act 573 coerces children to view, venerate, and obey commandments that are against their beliefs and interferes with parents’ ability to direct their children’s religious upbringing. The law therefore also violates the Free Exercise Clause, which protects the right to hold and exercise religious beliefs of one’s choice, including no religious beliefs.
Plaintiffs ask for a judgment from the court that the law is unconstitutional and an order that prohibits implementation of the law and the posting of the Commandments.
On August 4, 2025, in a victory for religious freedom and church-state separation, the district court issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting the school district defendants from implementing Act 573. The court called Act 573 “plainly unconstitutional” and called it “part of a coordinated strategy among several states to inject Christian religious doctrine into public-school classrooms.”
Despite the district court’s August 4 ruling, some Arkansas school districts—that were not initially defendants in our lawsuit—have moved forward with displaying the Ten Commandments in classrooms. So we’ve added two new school districts to our lawsuit, one on August 22, 2025, and one on October 14, 2025. Both times, the district court quickly issued orders requiring that the additional school districts remove the displays.
