Arkansas state attorneys stood before a three-judge federal appeals panel in St. Louis on Tuesday and argued that a lower court judge got it wrong when he permanently blocked the state's law requiring Ten Commandments displays in every public school classroom and library. The law, known as Act 573, mandates a 16-inch-by-20-inch Protestant version of the Ten Commandments in Arkansas classrooms, and the fight over its constitutionality is now in the hands of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The case, formally titled Stinson v. Fayetteville School District No. 1, began in June 2025 when seven Arkansas families with children in public schools filed suit, and it has since grown to ten families across six districts, according to the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. The expansion followed Conway and Lakeside school districts posting the required displays, which drew those districts into the litigation, as reported by the Arkansas Advocate. Lakeside, in Garland County, was added to the case in late 2025.
At the center of the appeal is a March ruling from Chief U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks, who granted summary judgment permanently enjoining six western Arkansas districts — Fayetteville, Springdale, Conway, Bentonville, Siloam Springs, and Lakeside — from displaying the Ten Commandments under Act 573. Brooks concluded that requiring the displays violates the Constitution's establishment clause, writing that historical practices and understanding do not support posting the document in public schools and that the displays could indirectly pressure religious minorities to conform.
A Judge's Blunt Assessment
Brooks did not mince words in his ruling. According to the ACLU of Arkansas, he wrote that the state “said the quiet part out loud” because the law's sole purpose was to proselytize children without any secular educational justification. Brooks also rejected the state's request to create Ten Commandments-free bubbles around each plaintiff's child, and he wrote that the Arkansas case was identical to a 1980 Kentucky case because the display requirement lacked a nonreligious legislative purpose, concluding that Act 573 cannot produce a constitutional classroom display of the Ten Commandments.
Arkansas Solicitor General Autumn Hamit Patterson told the appellate panel that Brooks was wrong about the plaintiffs' standing, the merits of the state's case, and historical practices involving the Bible and Ten Commandments in public schools, per the Democrat-Gazette's account of the hearing. She argued that a future Ten Commandments display could offend or coerce plaintiffs despite Brooks not knowing the display's content or surrounding context, and she maintained that Act 573's historical poster requirement does not constitute religious establishment or burden free exercise rights. Patterson noted the law does not require the displays to be included in curricula, does not require teachers or students to interact with or acknowledge the posters, and allows students to simply ignore them.
Judge Presses on Neutrality
During Tuesday's oral arguments, U.S. Circuit Judge David Stras, a Trump appointee on the three-judge panel, pressed state attorneys on religious neutrality, noting the difficulty of evaluating cases where religious activity is actively brought into public classrooms, according to Courthouse News. That tension — between the state's insistence that passive wall posters compel nothing and the plaintiffs' argument that mandatory daily exposure amounts to state-sponsored religious messaging — sits at the heart of the appeal, the outlet reports.
Jonathan Youngwood, arguing for the families, told the panel the law is coercive and interferes with parents' religious education rights, and that an injunction is necessary to protect families' religious freedom under the First Amendment's establishment and free exercise clauses. Youngwood said Ten Commandments displays in every public-school classroom amount to government-mandated religious instruction, and that religion should be taught in world religions, history, or other appropriate classes rather than as a dictate posted in every room. The Office of Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin has separately argued the families lack standing altogether, contending their alleged injuries are speculative since they had not yet seen Act 573 displays or the context surrounding them.
Coalition of Faiths Behind the Challenge
The ten plaintiff families are backed by a multi-organization legal coalition comprising the ACLU, the ACLU of Arkansas, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, and pro bono counsel from Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP, according to the ACLU. The coalition represents families from Jewish, Unitarian Universalist, multifaith, and nonreligious backgrounds. The lawsuit was originally filed in June 2025 by a multifaith group of seven Arkansas families with public-school children, and it prompted a preliminary injunction that August temporarily stopping six districts from displaying the Ten Commandments.
Act 573 originated as Senate Bill 433, sponsored by state Sen. Jim Dotson, during the 2025 legislative session. It passed the Arkansas Senate 27–4 and the House 71–20 before Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed it into law on April 14, 2025, per legislative records. The law requires copies of the Ten Commandments to be posted conspicuously in every classroom and library, legible to a person with average vision from anywhere in the room, using a specific Protestant-associated version selected by lawmakers. After the initial judicial blocks in August 2025, Sanders publicly defended the law by characterizing the Ten Commandments as the basis of Western law and morality and promised full state support for appellate challenges, according to Baptist News Global.
Reach Beyond the Classroom
The mandate extends beyond K-12 public schools. Act 573 also requires displays in state agency facilities and public colleges, and several Arkansas institutions of higher education received posters in early 2026 without facing direct lawsuits, Baptist News Global's reporting notes. Separately, a copy of the Ten Commandments was displayed alongside other historical documents in a hallway of the Georgia Capitol in Atlanta in June 2024, a comparison point in the broader national debate over such displays.
The Arkansas case does not exist in a legal vacuum. In April 2026, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 9–8 to uphold a similar Texas classroom Ten Commandments law, creating a direct split with the 8th Circuit's lower court rulings, according to the Constitution Center. Texas's law similarly relied on donated classroom displays. And in February 2026, the full 5th Circuit voted 12–6 to lift a preliminary injunction on Louisiana's 2024 classroom mandate, ruling that constitutional challenges were premature before posters were physically displayed in classrooms, as reported by The Guardian. Louisiana was the first state to pass a modern classroom mandate, in 2024.
A Doctrine in Flux
State attorneys across these cases are leaning on a shift in Supreme Court doctrine. While the Supreme Court struck down a Kentucky classroom Ten Commandments law in Stone v. Graham in 1980, state attorneys argue that precedent was superseded by the Court's 2022 ruling in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, which replaced the decades-old Lemon test with a historical tradition standard, per the Free Speech Center. Brooks's March ruling explicitly invoked the 1980 Kentucky case, finding the Arkansas law's display requirement lacked any nonreligious legislative purpose — the same defect that doomed the Kentucky statute.
Also worth noting: in June 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that universal injunctions exceeding named parties exceed a judge's power to grant requested relief, a decision that shapes how far Brooks's block on Act 573 can reach beyond the six districts named in the suit. With the 5th Circuit permitting enforcement of the Texas and Louisiana laws while an 8th Circuit judge has declared Arkansas's law unconstitutional, the diverging appellate outcomes are positioning classroom religious displays for potential direct review by the U.S. Supreme Court, according to the ACLU of Arkansas. Arkansas is one of several states, including Ohio pursuing a similar mandate, where lawmakers have moved to require the displays following the Kennedy decision.
