In a preliminary ruling, a federal court has blocked the state of Arkansas from taking action against two public school teachers for teaching Critical Race Theory (CRT) while their lawsuit challenging the anti-indoctrination provision of Arkansas’ LEARNS Act (“Section 16”) plays out.
The state may, however, discipline those teachers for compelling a student to “adopt, affirm, or profess” a belief in CRT, U.S. District Judge Lee Rudofsky ruled earlier this week.
Two students joined the teachers as plaintiffs in the litigation over Section 16, which prohibits the promotion of “teaching that would indoctrinate students with ideologies such as Critical Race Theory … that conflict with the principle of equal protection under the law.”
The two teachers said they were self-censoring what and how they teach to avoid punishment under Section 16. Based on that self-censorship, the students asserted a constitutional claim. The First Amendment protects their right to receive information, they said, including information their teachers would otherwise be providing them.
The court emphasized that its early ruling narrowly applies only to the two teachers involved in the lawsuit. Nonetheless, it said:
The Order as a whole should give comfort to teachers across the state (and to their students) that Section 16 does not prohibit teachers from teaching about, using, or referring to Critical Race Theory or any other theory, ideology, or idea so long as the teachers do not compel their students to accept as valid such theory, ideology, or idea.
You have to wonder, though, how the court’s order will be enforced in a real-life, woke classroom. How will the court distinguish between a teacher who merely teaches CRT and one who compels a student to accept it?
The order explains:
Compulsion requires speech or actions like the following examples: (1) a teacher grading or threatening to grade on the basis of whether a student accepts or rejects a theory, ideology, or idea; (2) a teacher giving or promising preferential treatment (or worse treatment) to a student based on that student’s declaration of (or refusal to declare) agreement or disagreement with a theory, ideology, or idea; (3) a teacher denigrating a student on the basis of his or her agreement or disagreement with a theory, ideology, or idea; (4) a teacher telling a student that all reasonable people would accept a theory, ideology, or idea; or (5) a teacher begging a student to accept a theory, ideology, or idea.
Meanwhile, the state has taken the position—a position the court relied on to reach its ruling—that Section 16 doesn’t prohibit “ordinary teaching” about CRT in the first place. Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin says the court’s decision just confirms what he’s been saying all along:
In other words, as the court concluded, “the only thing being enjoined is something the Defendants believe the statute does not do anyway.”
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