A Rare First Amendment Victory for a Public School Teacher Complaining About Restrictions on In-School Speech
Christian posters cannot be discriminated against:
"Generally a public school has broad authority over what teachers say in class. When they’re teaching, or counseling students, they are seen as speaking on behalf of the school, and the school has broad power to control its own speech. And schoolteachers generally have no constitutional right to put up materials of their own on the walls, since those are the school’s walls, for the school to dispose of as the administration pleases.
But Johnson v. Poway Unified School Dist., decided yesterday by the federal district court for the Southern District of California, is a rare exception: The judge concluded that the school district had created a designated public forum for teacher speech, by allowing teachers to put up pretty much any posters they please in their classrooms....
Therefore, the school district couldn’t constitutionally exclude from this forum Bradley Johnson’s 7′ x 2′ banners, “striped in red, white, and blue and set[ting] forth famous national phrases” — on one, “In God We Trust,” “One Nation Under God,” “God Bless America,” and “God Shed His Grace On Thee,’” and on the other, “All Men Are Created Equal, They Are Endowed By Their CREATOR.” The court concluded that such exclusion — especially in light of the school’s allowing the Imagine lyrics, the Tibetan prayer flags with images of the Buddha, and Gandhi’s “Hindu messages” (the court’s label) — was impermissible viewpoint discrimination, as well as impermissible religious preference. Moreover, the court said, allowing Johnson’s message wouldn’t violate the Establishment Clause, because “Any perceived endorsement of a single religion is dispelled by the fact that other teachers are also permitted to display other religious messages and anti-religious messages on classroom walls.”
Source
A list of the many other permitted posters at the link given. I originally covered the matter on June 17, 2007. It would appear that the mention of God was what set the Leftist school board off on their outburst of bigotry. The school could possibly appeal the matter to the 9th Circus now but the teacher and his supporters are prepared to go to SCOTUS if need be
5 comments:
Obviously, the only way to bring sanity and rational thinking back to Mexifornia is to point a lawyer at them. BRAVO BRADLEY JOHNSON!!
Most of the quotes were founding fathers quoting the bible as justification for the manner in which they constructed our government. God forbid that children should know that the founding fathers of our country believed in God.
They also believed in slavery (which was justified in their Bible)
"Any perceived endorsement of a single religion is dispelled by the fact that other teachers are also permitted to display other religious messages and anti-religious messages on classroom walls."
If they are going to allow anti-religious messages on classroom walls, then they had damn well better allow religious messages on classroom walls.
Anon 6:09 - that was the bit that attracted my attention the most.
It seems that the Court took a balancing approach - no 'religion' was being endorsed because others were also present... This clearly shows it was viewpoint discrimination by the school but is an interesting legal development. I'd be interested to see if it catches on.
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