St. Louis, Missouri — The American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU affiliates within the Eighth Circuit, and PEN America filed a friend-of-the-court brief today in Walls v. Sanders, a First Amendment challenge to Arkansas’s ban on “prohibited indoctrination” in K-12 public schools. The law chills full and frank classroom discussion about race. The brief, submitted to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, argues that students have an independent First Amendment right to receive information, including in public school curricula.
As the groups explain in the brief, the Eighth Circuit’s decision in Pratt v. Independent School District No. 831, which recognizes students' right to receive information in classroom curricula, has been in place since 1982. Abandoning Pratt would have dramatic and devastating implications for public education, potentially allowing schools to become forums for actual government propaganda and indoctrination.
“Our students deserve an honest and comprehensive education, not one censored by political agendas,” said Emerson Sykes, senior staff attorney with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “Laws like this undermine the very purpose of public education in a democracy.”
“Students deserve to know the truth about our history and struggle with race and racism, added Holly Dickson, executive director of the ACLU of Arkansas. “Having facts is fundamental for progress toward racial equality and justice. It is especially ironic and appalling that the law could muzzle the teaching of accurate facts about racial equality at Central High School, ground zero for school integration in Arkansas and across the South.”
“The outcome of this case is important to Iowans — who are facing our own challenges when it comes to censorship in public schools with the passage of Iowa’s truly awful law banning books, forcibly outing kids, and telling teachers and students ‘Don’t Say LGBTQ,’” said Rita Bettis Austen, legal director of the ACLU of Iowa. “We should all agree that our public school students have a First Amendment right to receive information. We’re proud to join our ACLU partners on this brief.”
“Under the guise of protecting children from so-called indoctrination, laws like Arkansas’s LEARNS Act are a smokescreen for censorship of constitutionally-protected expression and access to information,” said Kasey Meehan, program director, Freedom to Read at PEN America. “All of us who value our Constitutional freedoms should be standing up for the First Amendment and students’ ability to learn about the complexities of American history. Every day that students are robbed of ideas and information as a result of Arkansas’s rights-effacing law is a day they are not getting the education and access to information they deserve.”
The Arkansas law is one example of the disturbing wave of classroom censorship bills that are attempting to attack students’ right to learn across the country. However, as the brief also notes, the ACLU has challenged similar laws restricting classroom discussions in Oklahoma, New Hampshire, and Florida — each of which has been blocked in whole or in part by federal courts.
The Eighth Circuit case is likely to be argued this fall, with a decision sometime next year.
