Girl's Verse Commemorating Grandfather's Military Service Included the Word 'God'
Bob Unruh, WND — A school district in North Carolina has been given a deadline to affirm that it will not censor a student’s speech, or a legal team assembled by the Alliance Defending Freedom will seek a “remedy” to the problem.The issue arose several days ago when the school district told a first-grade student that a poem commemorating her grandfathers’ military service could not include the word “God,” because one member of the community didn’t like it.
But in a letter sent from ADF to the McDowell County Schools in Marion, N.C., the lawyers pointed out that the censorship “was a violation of her First Amendment rights.”
“A first-grader at the school was told that she had to remove references to ‘God’ in a poem she wrote to honor her grandfathers’ service to our country during the Vietnam War,” the letter said. “In her poem, she had included the lines ‘He prayed to God for peace, he prayed to God for strength,’ to describe the historical actions of her grandfathers during the war. However, after a community member complained about the inclusion of the student’s poem in a Veteran’s Day Ceremony, the school forced her to remove the lines.”
ADF told the school it’s “a fundamental principle of constitutional law that school officials may not suppress or exclude the personal speech of students simply because the speech is religious or contains a religious perspective.”
“This principle cannot be denied without eviscerating the essential First Amendment guarantees of free speech and religious freedom,” ADF said.
ADF noted that many school officials incorrectly think allowing a student to express a religious idea violates the “separation of church and state.” But, the letter said, the Supreme Court never had held that the Constitution requires “complete separation of church and state.”
“The court has merely held that the establishment clause of the First Amendment requires the state to be neutral in its relations with religious believers and non-believers.”
Further, the student’s speech is private, not government speech, the letter explains. » Read More
» WND.com
» Bob Unruh Article Archive
About the Author
Bob Unruh joined WND in 2006 after nearly three decades with the Associated Press, as well as several Upper Midwest newspapers, where he covered everything from legislative battles and sports to tornadoes and homicidal survivalists. He is also a photographer whose scenic work has been used commercially.