Arkansas' LEARNS Act on education faces a federal court challenge: What to know about the case

In a legal complaint filed late last month in federal court for the Eastern District of Arkansas, two students, their parents and one teacher of African American Studies from Little Rock Central High School challenged Arkansas’ LEARNS Act, calling it “an unconstitutional law that violates plaintiffs' First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment rights.”

The LEARNS Act is an omnibus bill passed in March 2023 that changed many rules and policies for public schools in the state. The plaintiffs seek to stop the law from being implemented and also claim compensatory damages from Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Education Secretary Jacob Oliva.

In a statement after its passage, Sanders called the act "the boldest, most far-reaching, most conservative education reforms in the country" and said that it and a similar executive order she made earlier that year were necessary "to ensure Washington bureaucrats can’t bully Arkansas schools into teaching racist indoctrination."

Here's what to know about the lawsuit and the case.

Why is there a new judge on the case?

Last week, Judge Kristine Baker, who was assigned to the case, recused herself and Judge Lee Rudofsky was assigned to replace her.

Baker hasn’t publicly explained why she recused herself.

Danielle Weatherby, a professor of law at the University of Arkansas, said judges might recuse themselves for any number of real or apparent conflicts of interest.

“It could be that they have a close family member who was involved either as a proponent or opponent of the law. It could be that she… [had spoken] publicly about the LEARNS Act," Weatherby said. "It could be a lot of reasons she felt like she could not be impartial.”

She said the change could have an impact on the outcome of the case.

“Having served as Solicitor General under Governor Hutchinson and then appointed in 2019 by President Trump, it seems as if Judge Rudofsky has more conservative political leanings, and that may influence his judicial decision making.”

Why is Section 16 of the law targeted in the lawsuit?

Some of the LEARNS Act’s better-known provisions raised teacher pay, make it easier to fire teachers without cause by rolling back the Fair Teacher Dismissal Act and allowed the state to issue vouchers which can be used to pay private and parochial school tuition, without requiring that those schools meet state curriculum standards.

Sanders, according to the lawsuit, explained that the LEARNS Act was also intended, in part, to “prevent a ‘left-wing political agenda’ from ‘brainwashing our children’ with ‘political indoctrination.’”

But the lawsuit is targeted narrowly at Section 16 of the LEARNS Act, which broadly restricts what material is allowed to be taught in public schools.

Section 16 requires that the education secretary ban material that would “promote teaching that would indoctrinate students with ideologies, such as Critical Race Theory.”

The first plaintiff, Ruthie Walls, teaches AP African American History, which, as part of the LEARNS Act, was removed from the state’s course code listings before the start of the 2023-24 school year.

The act specifies that Section 16 is meant to ensure that “employees, contractors, guest speakers, and lecturers are in compliance with Title IV and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” which concern desegregation and discrimination.

But Najja Baptist, of the University of Arkansas Department of Sociology, said the law has “hijacked the Civil Rights Movement’s playbook … in order to revert and reverse some of [its] accomplishments.” He criticized restricting the curriculum and the voucher component, saying it will defund public schools and “usher in a new form of what many would consider to be de facto segregation.”

“That trauma that occurred with the integration of students into Little Rock High in 1957 is what will be erased from the curriculum if the LEARNS Act has its way," Baptist said.

What are the five counts in the lawsuit?

The lawsuit alleges the state violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution on five overlapping counts.

It alleges:

• That the LEARNS Act violates the First Amendment’s protection of free speech and expression.

• That it leads to “content and viewpoint based discrimination in violation of First Amendment right to receive information.”

• That it’s unconstitutional because its wording is so vague and broad that it “fails to provide… fair notice of what is prohibited [and] is so standardless that it authorizes or encourages seriously discriminatory enforcement.”

• That it discriminates based on race.

• And, finally, that it deprives the plaintiffs of civil liberties without due process.

“By restricting AP [African American Studies] curriculum due to certain subject matter but not restricting the curriculum of similar AP courses covering the same subject matter, it creates two different classes along racial lines,” the complaint reads.

Each count will have to be adjudicated separately. Weatherby said that each one will have different hurdles to clear. Those hurdles, though, are different for the plaintiffs and for the state.

“Anytime there's an allegation that a statute or a measure violates equal protection” under the Fourteenth Amendment, she said, “then it's the government's burden to justify the measure.”

The state will “have to prove a compelling government interest, and that the measure at stake here is the least restrictive means of achieving that interest. And that is a very high bar.”

“I think the First Amendment claim is going to be a little bit more challenging” than the one made under the Fourteenth Amendment, she said.

Suing over freedom of speech in primary and secondary education “is just a difficult, uphill battle… because of the local control and the discretion that's given to school administrators and to the government to set curriculum.”

The First Amendment argument, she said, relies in some ways on establishing that the state violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause because, as long as the state is not “chilling some speech over other speech, then you won’t have a First Amendment problem.”

What’s next in the case?

Weatherby said that, regardless of the ruling in the Eastern District of Arkansas, where the case is now, that it will be appealed to the next highest court, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

“Historically,” she said, “the Eighth Circuit has been more government friendly.”

With several other similar cases being adjudicated around the country, there’s the possibility of “split in the circuits,” or a disagreement between two circuit courts of appeal. Those conflicts would need to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

With that in mind, Weatherby said that, in all likelihood, “This is going to take years.”

This article originally appeared on Fort Smith Times Record: Students and teacher challenge LEARNS Act in federal court