From the Arkansas Advocate:
A federal judge ruled Tuesday Arkansas must remove a Ten Commandments monument from state Capitol grounds, but put her order on hold so officials can appeal the decision.
U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker blocked the enforcement of the 2015 law requiring the privately-funded monument’s installation, ruling it violates the U.S. Constitution. Baker stayed her order giving the state time to appeal to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Plaintiffs, who filed a lawsuit against the secretary of state in 2018, argue the Ten Commandments Monument Display Act violates the Arkansas Constitution provision that deals with the separation of church and state. They also claim the law violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The Establishment Clause prohibits Congress from creating any law “respecting an establishment of religion.”
Baker wrote Tuesday that the law, “together with the other evidence in the record, conveys a message that the Christian religion is favored” and is coercive in violation of the Establishment Clause.
The plaintiffs include an exercising group that complains it must pass the monument regularly while walking or cycling; the Arkansas Society of Freethinkers; The Satanic Temple; and a rabbi.
The Arkansas Legislature passed the law permitting the construction of the Ten Commandments monument in 2015, and the first monument was installed in 2017.
In less than 24 hours, a man with a history of mental illness intentionally smashed his car into the display. The man also destroyed a Ten Commandments monument outside Oklahoma’s Capitol in 2014.
A new monument — protected by concrete bollards — was installed in 2018 between the Capitol building and the Arkansas Supreme Court building, where it remains today.
Several groups quickly filed federal lawsuits for the removal of the monument, and those efforts have been combined into one lawsuit, now in its eighth year.
Baker heard a full day of arguments on the suit in July 2023.
Arkansas’ monument is a replica of a display at the Texas Capitol that was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005. Justices that year struck down Ten Commandments displays in two Kentucky courthouses.
This story is breaking and will be updated.
