In compliance with a state law, copies of the Ten Commandments were hung at the University of Arkansas starting in October. They posters are still on display but their status remains in legal limbo. Photo Credit: Lauren Davidson
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – A legal battle has sparked across the South, creating conflict between state lawmakers looking to place religion more directly into public schools and families pushing back. At the center of it are new laws in Arkansas, Texas, and Louisiana that mandate the display of the Ten Commandments in every public school and library.
The legal battle in Arkansas is encapsulated in the ongoing case, “Stinson v. Fayetteville School District No. 1.” The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas issued a preliminary injunction in August that blocks the display in certain school districts across the state of Arkansas.
The “plaintiffs are Arkansas parents, students, and clergy from Jewish, Christian and non-religious backgrounds whose children attend public schools in the districts named in the lawsuit,” Megan Bailey, the communications director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas said via email. “They all have students who would be required to sit under the state-mandated Ten Commandments display in their classrooms — every day, in every class, for every year of their K–12 education.”
This emerging battle continues as state legislators are actively pushing (or have passed) laws that resemble those deemed unconstitutional by a four-decade-old Supreme Court precedent. In Arkansas, the bill mandating the Ten Commandments be displayed was titled Act 573 and was signed into law in April. Bills passed in other states carry language similar to Arkansas’ act. Viewed jointly, it’s a pivotal moment in ongoing debates over religious freedom and the separation between church and state.
“Act 573 inflicts real, immediate harm. School children are a captive audience; they cannot opt out of exposure,” Bailey said via email. “Families are telling us their children already feel anxious about being singled out, marginalized, or seen as “other” because they don’t share the state’s religious beliefs.”
Supporters, meanwhile, see the push for the display of The Ten Commandments in classrooms as a way to connect public school students with historical documents that share a Christian worldview. The Ten Commandment posters now visible at the University of Arkansas — which is not part of the Stinson suit and therefore currently required by law to display them — were donated by an organization called CounterActUSA. The group was founded in 2021 by a University of Arkansas alum, and situations like those at the U of A are part of the organization’s core mission.
“We believe that bringing Biblical truth into cultural and political discussions is an incredible avenue for sharing the gospel,” the group states on their website.
Across Arkansas, Texas and Louisiana, upwards of 11,200 public schools and 6.6 million students are impacted by the pending court cases.
The Court Case in Arkansas
Arkansas Act 573, passed by the state legislature in April, mandates that taxpayer-funded buildings, including classrooms and libraries, display a version of the Ten Commandments in a clearly visible, 16×20-inch format. Proponents of the law argue that the representation of the Ten Commandments provides public access to a vital historical artifact.
However, a group of seven multifaith and non-religious families quickly filed a federal lawsuit. The lead plaintiffs, Samantha and Jonathan Stinson of Fayetteville, are backed by the ACLU of Arkansas. Along with their children, the Stinsons argued that the law violated their rights under the First Amendment.
“Parents report fear that their kids will be ostracized by classmates or treated differently by teachers. Students worry they’ll be judged or pressured to participate in a faith tradition that isn’t theirs,” Bailey said. “Educators are telling us this law puts them in the impossible position of choosing between obeying the government or honoring their students’ diverse religious backgrounds.”
In a press release from ACLU of Arkansas, plaintiff Samantha Stinson said “Act 573 is a direct infringement of our religious-freedom rights. The version of the Ten Commandments mandated by Act 573 conflicts with our family’s Jewish tenets and practice, and our belief that our children should receive their religious instruction at home and within our faith community, not from government officials.’”
The Court’s Legal Evaluation
In August 2025, U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Brooks granted a preliminary injunction, effectively blocking the law from taking effect in Fayetteville, Bentonville, Springdale, Siloam Springs, and, later on, Lakeside and Conway because they were added as plaintiffs in the case.
“The preliminary injunction halted Act 573 before schools were compelled to put up the mandated scripture. The court recognized the law’s immediate harms and its clear constitutional problems,” Bailey said.
Professor John Thorlin of the University of Arkansas School of Law is an expert on constitutional law. He said “the preliminary injunction is pretty much a guaranteed preview of how the court is going to ultimately rule because there isn’t really any disagreement about the facts.”
The legal challenge argued that the law violated two key factors of the First Amendment: the Establishment Clause, which prohibits the government from establishing an official religion, and the Free Exercise Clause, which guarantees people the right to believe in any religion they want.
Abigail DeJarnatt, CEO and founder of CounteractUSA, pushed back against the decision, saying that “separation of church and state is fallaciously used as a founding principle of our country.”
She argued that the phrase “can be found nowhere” in founding documents and has been misconstrued to mean that Christians, with Christian values, should not enact or enforce laws that represent their values, just like anyone else brings their worldview into the legislature.”
Thorlin pointed to several places in our nation’s founding documents that he believes say otherwise.
“If you go back and read what Madison and Jefferson were writing at the time… there’s no shortage of places you can look,” Thorlin said. “They pretty clearly felt strongly that they didn’t want religion and government to be commingled.”
“This case is not anti-religion; it’s about protecting everyone’s religious freedom. Every Arkansas family has the right to decide what they believe — or don’t believe — without the government pushing a particular version of religious doctrine onto their children,” Bailey said via email. “Public schools are for education, not religious conversion. No child should have to sit under a state-mandated religious text to access public education.”
Act 573’s legislative sponsors said they planned to continue the fight and said they expected their arguments would prevail in higher courts. It will likely take some time for a final ruling to play out.
Texas and Louisiana: Part of the Push
Arkansas is not alone in this push to display the Ten Commandments in public spaces. Act 573 is part of a legislative push that has seen similar laws pass in Texas and Louisiana. The timing and similarity of these actions have caused civil rights groups and federal judges to question if the call for the Commandments in classrooms is a unified effort to test the boundaries of church-state separation following recent shifts in the U.S. Supreme Court.
“These aren’t isolated events — they’re part of a broader campaign to impose state-approved religious doctrine on students,” Bailey said. “Our response reflects that reality. We’re coordinating across affiliates because our constitutional values are being challenged on a coordinated scale. When lawmakers push government-sponsored religion into public schools, we respond wherever those rights are threatened.”
In Texas, A Lawsuit and a Countersuit
In Texas, Senate Bill 10, signed into law in 2025, requires a similar display of the Ten Commandments in all public school classrooms. Like the Arkansas case, this law faced immediate legal resistance from multifaith families.
One such lawsuit, “Rabbi Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District,” yielded the same result as the Arkansas case: federal judges granted preliminary injunctions.
The Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton, however, has taken a different stance. He’s not only defending the law, but also suing school districts that refuse to comply.
Thorlin said “Paxton would probably argue that he thinks the Supreme Court will ultimately side with the states.”
Louisiana: The Initial Battleground
Louisiana’s law, House Bill 71 or Act 676, was the first of the current wave to be enacted. It passed in June 2024. Its specific language was strategically drafted to try and overcome the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1980 precedent, “Stone v. Graham,” but it was ultimately unsuccessful.
HB 71 mandated that the Ten Commandments must be displayed with a specific, three-paragraph “context statement” hich went as follows:
“The display must include a statement titled ‘The History of the Ten Commandments in American Public Education,’ which claims the Commandments ‘were a prominent part of American public education for almost three centuries.”
In the lawsuit “Rev. Roake v. Brumley,” the United States District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana also issued an injunction against the state’s law, a decision that was then upheld by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
In an ACLU of Louisiana press release, Jesse Vad, the group’s communication director said “The Fifth Circuit panel correctly understood that the Constitution prohibits public schools from becoming instruments of religious evangelism. We remain ready to defend this victory for religious freedom. Louisiana’s attempt to use its court system to impose a narrow religious agenda has failed at every level.”
This consistency in injunctions issued by lower court rulings (Arkansas is in the 8th Circuit, while Texas and Louisiana are in the 5th Circuit), highlights the current power of the “Stone v. Graham” precedent, observers note.
A New Legal Standard?
The ultimate objective for proponents of the Ten Commandments laws is widely believed to be the overturning of “Stone v. Graham.”
“The groups that are pushing this legislation have been fairly open that they’re doing it because they think there is a reasonable prospect that the Supreme Court will overturn ‘Stone v. Graham,’ ” Thorlin said.
A lot of this hope stems from a 2022 Supreme Court decision, “Kennedy v. Bremerton School District,” which upheld a high school football coach’s right to pray on the field and effectively replaced the former “Lemon Test” for Establishment Clause cases with a test focused on historical practices and understandings.
The new standard focuses on whether the practice is consistent with the nation’s “historical understanding of the Establishment Clause.” Parts of the different Ten Commandments laws argue that it has historical significance as a foundation of American law and was present in early American education.
“In granting the preliminary injunction, the district court rejected the idea that posting the Ten Commandments in public schools has historical antecedents or a non-religious ‘heritage’ basis.” Bailey said.
The legal challenges in Arkansas, Texas, and Louisiana are now on similar, but still separate, tracks toward each of their Circuit Courts of Appeals. If the Circuit Courts issue conflicting decisions, or the states continue to press the historical argument, the issue of state-mandated religious display in public schools is highly likely to land before the U.S. Supreme Court. This is where the fate of Act 573, and the religious environment of American classrooms nationwide, may ultimately be decided.