“Make no mistake, these coordinated efforts to rewrite our history, remove our leaders from classrooms and degrade our culture are a covert attempt to revert the progress we’ve worked tirelessly to secure,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson told ABC News shortly after the lawsuit was first filed.
Earlier this week, a federal judge dismissed an equal protection claim against an Arkansas state ban on “indoctrination” in public schools while ordering an additional briefing on whether the law itself is unconstitutionally vague.
According to The Arkansas Advocate, the lawsuit was originally filed in March 2024. It challenges provisions of Section 16 of a far-ranging education law called the LEARNS Act, which prohibits certain forms of “indoctrination” in public schools across the state.
In mid-2024, U.S. District Judge Lee Rudofsky granted a preliminary injunction against Section 16; but, just over a year later, an appellate panel overturned Rudofsky’s ruling, sending the case back to district court for reconsideration.
On Wednesday, Rudofsky issued a 28-page order against the Arkansas State Conference NAACP, which had earlier argued that the state’s decision to remove an AP-level African American Studies pilot course under the LEARNS Act violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection.
In his decision, Rudofsky found that the NAACP failed to establish that Arkansas Education Secretary Jacob Oliva engaged in discrimination when he revoked the course’s certification.
The NAACP, for its part, maintained that the course’s status was revoked because the state’s governor has expressed a desire to “protect” students from “left-wing political agenda brainwashing.” This logic was not accepted by Rudofsky, who held that the revocation does not appear to have been racially motivated.
“A desire to protect students from ‘left-wing indoctrination’ is not tantamount to a discriminatory intent or purpose to adversely impact African-American students,” the judge said.
Rudofsky said that, in this case, legislators and education officials made course-specific determinations on the basis of perceived political affinities. Even if this might be problematic in its own right, Rudofsky said that the Fourteenth Amendment is limited in its scope.
“Because there is no such thing as a ‘black idea’ or a ‘white idea,’ discriminating against ideas cannot in and of itself violate the Equal Protection Clause,” he said. “Similarly, because there is no such thing as a ‘black course’ or a ‘white course,’ discriminating against a particular course cannot in and of itself violate the Equal Protection Clause.”
Mike Laux, an attorney for the plaintiffs, told the Arkansas Advocate that he is not surprised by the ruling.
“We respectfully disagree with the Court and still believe the LEARNS Act disproportionately impacts black students in Arkansas,” Laux said. “We will continue to fight for these students, especially in regard to Plaintiffs’ vagueness due process claim which remains viable.”
ABC News notes that Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed an order prohibiting the teaching of critical race theory in public schools in early 2023. At the time, Sanders said that critical race theory “is antithetical to traditional American values of neutrality, equality, and fairness. It emphasizes skin color as a person’s primary characteristic, thereby resurrecting segregationist values, which America has fought so hard to reject.”
“It is the policy of this administration that CRT, discrimination, and indoctrination have no place in Arkansas classrooms,” she said.
Shortly afterward, Sanders signed the LEARNS Act into effect.
The lawsuit contends that the effect of the Sanders’ administration attempts to limit discussion of race has been far-reaching; attorneys claim that, since the LEARNS Act took effect, the Arkansas Department of Education and other state-level agencies have “purged” public educational resources, “including information on civil rights from the NEA, the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute, and Selma Online with no explanation for the removal.”
“Make no mistake, these coordinated efforts to rewrite our history, remove our leaders from classrooms and degrade our culture are a covert attempt to revert the progress we’ve worked tirelessly to secure,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson told ABC News shortly after the lawsuit was first filed.
Sources
8th Circuit sides with Arkansas officials in case over LEARNS ban on school ‘indoctrination’
Exclusive: NAACP joins lawsuit against Arkansas LEARNS Act in attempt to fight anti-DEI efforts
Federal judge dismisses part of lawsuit against Arkansas classroom ‘indoctrination’ ban
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