A lawsuit filed in the Eastern District of Arkansas seeks to halt the state’s Educational Freedom Account program, on the grounds that it violates the United States Constitution by allowing public funds to be used for the support of private religious schools and discriminates against disabled children.
The lawsuit assigned to U.S. District Judge D.P. Marshall Jr. was filed June 13 by four plaintiffs currently engaged in a separate legal challenge that claims the program violates the Arkansas Constitution.
The plaintiffs are Gwen Faulkenberry, Special Renee Sanders, Anika Whitfield and Kimberly Crutchfield, who are represented by Richard H. Mays and Hannah Allison Gore Gipson of the Little Rock-based Richard Mays Law Firm. Faulkenberry, who lives in the Ozark School District, has been a columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette since 2021.
The defendants include Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the Arkansas Department of Education, the Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration, Education Secretary Jacob Oliva, secretary of the Department of Finance and Administration Jim Hudson and each of the nine-member state Board of Education, who are represented by state Attorney General Tim Griffin’s office.
In their complaint, the plaintiffs claim the Educational Freedom Account program — referred to throughout the document as “the Voucher Program” — violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment, which prohibits the government from favoring one religion over others. Their filing also claims the program violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, which mandates that people in similar circumstances receive the same treatment under the law. Finally, the complaint asserts the program violates Article 2, Section 24 of the Arkansas Constitution, which prohibits people from being compelled to attend any place of worship against their consent and bars the state from giving preference by law to religious establishments, denominations or modes of worship “above any other.”
“The LEARNS Act is, through the use of public funds of the State of Arkansas, creating a separate and unequal dual school system of public and private schools, the latter of which, as a regular part of their curricula, teach the doctrines of particular religious, creeds and sects as a means of the establishment, encouragement, development and perpetuation of such religions, creeds and sects,” the complaint states. The plaintiffs claim that system also “denies the equal protection of the laws available and applicable to Arkansas school children based on economic, racial and physical characteristics and abilities,” and creates a “system of private schools that are not available to all school children in Arkansas because such private schools are not located in and accessible to school children in many rural areas of the State of Arkansas.”
Asked for comment on the lawsuit, Sam Dubke, spokesman for the governor’s office, said in an email: “This suit has no merit. More than 44,000 students have applied for EFAs for next school year and far-left activists are playing politics with those kids’ futures to try and protect a failed status quo.”
In an earlier statement, Griffin praised the education overhaul, adding that he “successfully defended the LEARNS Act and will eagerly do it again.”
