It’s the law: Ten Commandments to be displayed in Arkansas government buildings and classrooms

Arkansas has become the second state to require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public buildings and classrooms, after Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a bill into law on Monday.

The measure, Senate Bill 433, requires a “durable poster or framed copy of a historical representation of the Ten Commandments” to be hung in public school classrooms and government buildings across the state.

“The Ten Commandments are the basis of all Western law and morality and it is entirely appropriate to display them to students, state employees, and every Arkansan who enters a government building,” Sanders’ communications director, Sam Dubke, told The Lion. 

Arkansas follows Louisiana, which passed similar legislation last year that is currently tied up in a federal appeals court following a First Amendment challenge.  

Arkansas state Rep. Alyssa Brown, R-Heber Springs, said religious symbols in the public sphere are constitutional so long as they comply with “longstanding history and tradition test,” the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported. 

“You cannot separate the history of our nation and the development of moral law and the Ten Commandments, nor should we,” added Brown, who sponsored the bill. 

Arkansas’ law requires the Ten Commandments to be displayed in “a size and typeface that is legible to a person with average vision” and be at least 16 by 20 inches in size.  

Opponents of requiring such displays in public school classrooms, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, which sued in Louisiana, cite the Supreme Court’s 1980 decision in Stone v. Graham. In that case, the court ruled that displaying the Ten Commandments in public schools violates the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. 

“The preeminent purpose for posting the Ten Commandments on schoolroom walls is plainly religious in nature,” the court noted. “The Ten Commandments are undeniably a sacred text in the Jewish and Christian faiths.” 

The court reasoned that teaching the Ten Commandments in school curriculum is different from posting them on school walls. “If the posted copies of the Ten Commandments are to have any effect at all, it will be to induce the schoolchildren to read, meditate upon, perhaps to venerate and obey, the Commandments,” the court’s opinion reads. The ACLU of Arkansas did not return a request for comment from The Lion about whether the group would pursue litigation. 

However, supporters argue that the Stone v. Graham decision relies on the now obsolete “Lemon Test,” a three-prong legal review used by the court for decades which resulted in a strict separation of church and state.  

In the 2022 Kennedy v. Bremerton School District case, the court abandoned the Lemon test and said it would look to “historical practices and understandings” to determine if the government violates the Establishment Clause. The court’s decision in that case made it “clear that religious expression and imagery on public property is constitutional and consistent with our nation’s history and tradition,” First Liberty Institute noted.  

“In Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the Court eliminated the Lemon Test, a legal precedent that stifled religious freedom for decades,” First Liberty said. “With that precedent now gone, other cases grounded in Lemon’s framework are no longer controlling, such as Stone v. Graham, a 5-4 decision that banished the Ten Commandments from schools.” 

First Liberty has been a strong supporter of displaying the commandments in schools, arguing that it is a constitutional way to teach students about the historical significance of the text. 

“We believe that if this bill is challenged in court, courts will ultimately conclude that posting the 10 Commandments is constitutional and consistent with history and tradition,” First Liberty Senior Counsel Stephanie Taub testified before the Arkansas state Legislature. “The Supreme Court has already noted in the American Legion case that the Ten Commandments have ‘historical significance as one of the foundations of our legal system.’”