A federal judge in Arkansas blocked a state law requiring the display of the 10 Commandments in public school classrooms.
The Hill reported:
A judge ruled Monday to permanently bar several school districts from following Arkansas’s law to display the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms.
U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks ruled the law violates the Establishment Clause and the free exercise rights of the plaintiffs.
“Act 573’s purpose is only to display a sacred, religious text in a prominent place in every public-school classroom. And the only reason to display a sacred, religious text in every classroom is to proselytize to children. The State has said the quiet part out loud,” the judge wrote.
The ruling affects several Arkansas school districts but is not a statewide ban.
“Today’s decision ensures that our clients’ classrooms will remain spaces where all students, regardless of their faith, feel welcomed and can learn without worrying that they do not live up to the state’s preferred religious beliefs,” said Heather Weaver, senior counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union’s Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief.
Jeff LeMaster, communications director for the office of state Attorney General Tim Griffin, said the office is “reviewing the opinion and will appeal.”
The ruling comes after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Louisiana’s state law requiring the Ten Commandments be posted in classrooms. Arkansas is under the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals.
A split in decisions could lead the case to the Supreme Court, which some proponents of the law are hoping for.
Let’s be clear. Hanging a citation from the Bible does not change student behavior. It does not make them more likely to obey the commandments. It is an effort to indoctrinate children, but it probably doesn’t do that either.
The Biblical verse is given a place to please adults.
It might be useful if education researchers compared the crime rate in districts that do or don’t hang the 10 Commandments in classrooms.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
as it should, public schools shouldn’t be “owned” by religion, and, the students, outside of the classroom setting, and in their individual homes, can worship whichever religion they want to, but public schools should not “favor” any religion over another, and unless the schools can have the Torah, the Holy Bible, the suttas (for Buddhism), along with ALL the other religions in the world, otherwise, it would not be fair, because IF you have one, you need to, include all, and there’s no way the schools will be able to put all the holy books of all the religions in the world on display.
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Exactly right.
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in order to compare anything to crime rate, statistics would have to be collected in a reliable way by a responsible government. We have not had such a collection since the Doge purges, and have had to rely on journalists and municipalities.
Just one more way we have Trumped good governance.
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Never understood why professional Christians would want the Ten Commandments displayed inside and outside of school classrooms, isn’t that technically Mosaic Law? Why not the Beatitudes, Christ’s sermons on the Mount, you know, the heart of his true teachings? I guess it doesn’t help that the Ten Commandments fall more in line with the hierarchies of a capitalist society whereas Christ’s teachings are the foundation of a more distributive political economy. Perhaps that’s why.
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That’s true. The Ten Commmandments appear in the Old Testament–two versions–not the New Testament. Why teach the Jewish testament instead of the Christian one? Whichever you want, do it in your own home or place of worship.
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I saw this on social media a while back: “If Christians want to hang the 10 Commandments in public schools because it will improve morality, they first have to explain why it isn’t working when they hang them in their churches.”
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