A federal appeals court says Arkansas can enforce its ban on teaching Critical Race Theory.
A three-judge panel of the 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the ban Wednesday. The ruling says students cannot compel schools to teach CRT because government entities can’t be forced to provide it.
The ban is part of the wide-sweeping 2023 education law called the Arkansas LEARNS Act, and was put on hold by a lower court judge in May 2024. A group of teachers and students from Little Rock Central High School had filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the ban.
“The students concede the classroom materials and instruction they seek to receive constitute government speech. This is fatal to their likelihood of success because the government’s own speech ‘is not restricted by the Free Speech Clause,’” the 14-page ruling reads.
Critical Race Theory is defined as a conceptual framework used to understand social conceptions of race and ethnicity, among other things, and asserts that racism is embedded in various laws, systems and institutions.
Section 16 of the LEARNS Act prohibits schools from “teaching that would indoctrinate students with ideologies such as Critical Race Theory.” Teachers who violate the section could lose their teaching license.
Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin celebrated the ruling in a statement.
“The appellate court held that prohibiting teachers from providing classroom materials and instruction about Critical Race Theory does not violate the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment because the government cannot be compelled to provide specific classroom materials. If it were otherwise, school curriculum would effectively be set by litigious actors and the courts,” the statement reads.
The ruling means Arkansas can enforce its ban on Critical Race Theory while the case against it plays out. The lawsuit has been sent back to United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas.
