On March 31, 2026, two federal judges issued very different rulings in two major church-state cases. Even though the cases involved different issues and were decided in different ways, both outcomes favored keeping important boundaries and church and state separation in place.
In Arkansas, a judge ordered the state to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the State Capitol grounds. In Texas, another judge refused to approve a proposed resolution in a case challenging the Johnson Amendment, the federal tax rule that restricts political campaign activity by churches and other tax-exempt nonprofits.
In Arkansas, a U.S. District Judge ruled that the state’s 2015 Ten Commandments Monument Act authorizing placement of the Ten Commandments on the State Capitol Grounds violated the Establishment Clause. Cave v. Jester, 2026 U.S. District.
The Ten Commandments monument at the center of the case was located at the Arkansas State Capitol. The plaintiffs argued that Arkansas’ Ten Commandments Monument Act authorizing the monument’s placement unconstitutionally endorsed religion on public property and also noted the state’s refusal to allow a Baphomet monument on equal terms.
The judge’s opinion focused on the monument’s religious character and the legislative history behind it. Namely that the Monument Act prescribed the text of the Ten Commandments, that the monument lacked explanatory language connecting it to a broader secular, civic, or historical context, and the commandments were previously explained in explicitly religious terms by Senators representing the act. The court also noted that, unlike other monuments on the Capitol grounds, the Ten Commandments monument was omitted from the Secretary of State’s “A Walk on the Hill” pamphlet describing the grounds and their memorials.
In the end, the Arkansas court treated the monument as a newly mandated, stand-alone display of religious text placed prominently at the seat of government, rather than as part of a longstanding historical tradition with an independently secular context.
A separate March 31 ruling from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas addressed a different church-state conflict, this one involving federal tax law rather than a physical religious display.
In National Religious Broadcasters v. Bessent, plaintiffs including two churches and two religious nonprofits argued that the Johnson Amendment, the provision of Section 501(c)(3) that bars churches from participating or intervening in political campaigns, chilled their speech and religious exercise by threatening their tax-exempt status if they engaged in prohibited political campaign activity. Nat’l Religious Broadcasters v. Bessent, No. 6:24-cv-00311. Under the current administration, the IRS had agreed with the religious groups that churches, but not 501(c)(3) organizations could support candidates and entered a consent judgment. Americans United for the Separation of Church and State intervened to maintain the current interpretation that churches may not campaign for candidates.
But the court did not reach the same conclusion as the IRS and instead held that the court lacked subject-matter jurisdiction because the Anti-Injunction Act and the federal-tax exception in the Declaratory Judgment Act bars suits aimed at restraining the assessment or collection of taxes. The court rejected the argument that the government’s agreement to a consent judgment could solve that problem, writing that subject-matter jurisdiction cannot be created by consent or litigation strategy.
The opinion framed the Johnson Amendment as a condition on tax benefits under Section 501(c)(3), not as a free-standing speech restriction divorced from taxation. Relying in part on Bob Jones University v. Simon, the court reasoned that a suit seeking to prevent loss of tax-exempt status under Section 501(c)(3) is, in substance, a suit to enjoin taxation.
The result was dismissal of the case rather than a ruling on whether the Johnson Amendment itself is constitutional. The court also noted that other paths may remain available, including refund suits or certain declaratory actions after an IRS determination regarding exempt status.
Viewed side by side, the Arkansas and Texas decisions offer a snapshot of modern church-state litigation. One court held that the Constitution forbids the state from elevating a religious text at the heart of its state government. The other held that, whatever the merits of the Johnson Amendment challenge, federal jurisdictional limits prevented the court from deciding. Together, the cases illustrate that battles over religion and government are shaped not only by constitutional principle, but also by the procedural rules that determine whether a court may hear the dispute at all.
Chloe Love
Secular AZ Legal Intern
