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A parent is suing Holly Area Schools in Michigan after her son was prevented from handing out fliers to schoolmates inviting them to a Christian youth summer camp. The parent is Katharine Smith but her son is being identified only by the initials J.S., as is allowed by federal law. you can see a copy of the complaint here (PDF).
The complaint, filed by the Alliance Defense Fund, a prominent Christian legal group, alleges that the school allows students and community groups to hand out printed material on any number of other things -- birthday parties, 4-H club, Girl Scouts, etc -- but told the plaintiff that he could not hand out the invitations to a church camp because anything that comes from a church can't be distributed at school.
The complaint, filed by the Alliance Defense Fund, a prominent Christian legal group, alleges that the school allows students and community groups to hand out printed material on any number of other things -- birthday parties, 4-H club, Girl Scouts, etc -- but told the plaintiff that he could not hand out the invitations to a church camp because anything that comes from a church can't be distributed at school.
The complaint includes the text of an email from Kent Barnes, the superintendent of the school district, which said:
"Distributing religious invitations/materials/explanations within the elementary school day is not appropriate. I contacted our legal firm as well to ensure my understanding is correct, and they agreed. It is not a matter of whether your child is standing or sitting in the classroom, hallway, or cafeteria. Simply stated, your request for your child to distribute religious materials/invitations to the classmates cannot be implemented."
The school is getting poor legal advice. Innumerable federal court cases have established the principle that if a school allows students or community groups to hand out literature at the school, religious and non-religious literature must be treated in precisely the same manner. That means they cannot allow one student to hand out invitations to, say, a soccer camp, to his classmates in the hallway but require another student to only leave fliers for a religious camp in the office where others could pick it up.
The U.S. Department of Education, in a set of guidelines on religious liberty sent to all public schools in the country (quoted by the First Amendment Center), says:
"Students have a right to distribute religious literature to their schoolmates on the same terms as they are permitted to distribute other literature that is unrelated to school curriculum or activities. Schools may impose the same reasonable time, place, and manner or other constitutional restrictions on distribution of religious literature as they do on nonschool literature generally, but they may not single out religious literature for special regulation."
If the school does not change its position, this case is unlikely to go past a motion for summary judgment in favor of the plaintiffs.
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Comments
I'm guessing the Principal is misreading the law firm's opinion. Either that, or the firm assigned the question to a young attorney with no history of practice in ConLaw. Because if they did agree with him, that's legal malpractice.
Posted by: kehrsam | November 2, 2009 9:20 AM
The school should most certainly allow the child to hand out his fliers. It should also allow the children of wiccans, buddhists, santeristas and adherents of the FSM to do the same.
Posted by: democommie | November 2, 2009 9:31 AM
Someone close to me is an elementary school principle at a public school in a very large school district. Their school district does not allow the distribution of any information to prevent flare-ups regarding controversial matters.
Posted by: Michael Heath | November 2, 2009 9:46 AM
Why does the concept of neutrality seem to be so hard for schools to understand? Moreover, why is it so hard to educate educators?
Posted by: Abby Normal | November 2, 2009 9:49 AM
Abby Normal:
It's not the educators, I think, it's the administrators.
Posted by: democommie | November 2, 2009 9:51 AM
Abby Normal, #4: Why does the concept of neutrality seem to be so hard for schools to understand?
I'm guessing that the right wing noise machine has convinced them that one whiff of religion in a school will bring down a ton of lawsuits from the evil liberals and atheists.
Yeah, they should still know better, but there you have it.
Posted by: Chiroptera | November 2, 2009 9:55 AM
Demo, that's a non-difference. The administrators for the most part work their up from teaching, don't they? In any event, I think education degrees need to start adding a ConLaw requirement to their course plans.
Posted by: BobApril | November 2, 2009 9:56 AM
We ran across a similar situation such as Michael Heath points out where the school district placed a blanket prohibition on any non-school handouts. This brought a bit of community support out against the ban as it affected boy scout, 4H and other popular recruitment efforts. The school district backed down and allowed the flyers again. The ban was easy and lazy. Administrators get paid to understand and implement fair, legal, reasonable policy. A few thousand letters and emails to the superintendent got them to do that in our case.
Posted by: MikeMa | November 2, 2009 10:13 AM
Posted by: James Hanley | November 2, 2009 10:20 AM
Posted by: FishyFred | November 2, 2009 10:45 AM
democommie said:
Perhaps, but "educate the administrators," doesn’t have the same ring to it. Call it poetic license. ;-)
@Chiroptera #6
I’ve little doubt that’s a significant factor, perhaps the primary factor, for the confusion. I just find it maddening, and a little unbelievable, that a group so prone to wild hysteria, with a track record of being so overwhelmingly and demonstrably wrong, still has such an impact.
Posted by: Abby Normal | November 2, 2009 10:56 AM
BobApril: A good friend of mine got a Masters in Ed. Administration and then a PhD in the last few years. Both programs included an Educational Law course that I had to help her with. So they do get the course. But...
1. Not being trained in law, they want black and white answers to their questions, not three-part tests and reasonable person standards; and,
2. Very little of the course is devoted to these types of questions. There is far more (and, let's be honest, more important) material to cover with No Child Left Behind, IDEA (governing education of children with disabilities) Title 1 (remedial reading programs) and even the requirements for keeping up with USDA free and reduced lunch programs.
My friend is not in a school right now, but when she was she was calling the District's lawyer at least once a month, and never about religious issues. Instead, the issues were searches of students; whether Individual student plans met all IDEA requirements after parents threatened to sue; a nuisance complaint for noise and traffic after her high school expanded student parking; and countless complaints accusing students of vandalism, break-ins and the like.
So, this type of conflict is simply not on an administrator's to-do list. So they call a friend, and hearsay floats around. That's why we see schools missing this on both ends of the spectrum.
Posted by: kehrsam | November 2, 2009 11:14 AM
Abby Normal: Perhaps, but "educate the administrators," doesn’t have the same ring to it.
How about "Administer an Education to the Education Administrators"?
Posted by: abb3w | November 2, 2009 11:38 AM
I apologize for straying a bit off topic, but I'm trying to get a feel for the Samaritan's Purse's Operation Christmas Child project, in which my daughter's school participates, apparently. We've been homeschooling until now, so I am just now discovering how involved public schools have become advancing Franklin Graham's "outreach" ministry (to "win the lost to personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ"). WT? I've found Canada's watch site, pursestrings.ca, but there doesn't seem to be much opposition to the program here in the U.S.... or, am I looking in the wrong places?
Thanks in advance for any ideas.
Posted by: Lynn | November 2, 2009 1:31 PM
Bob April:
I was being a bit snarky, but most teachers that I've known over the years do not grade their administrators very highly, as teachers.
Posted by: democommie | November 2, 2009 2:07 PM
I think the overhyped 'god isn't even allowed to be mentioned in school' crowd and the rest of the mouthbreathing idiots that believe that stupid shit make places like the ADF very happy. They know the reality, but they don't care since it brings them business. When they win, they get money and publicity. When they lose, they get to claim persecution, and still get publicity. Win-win for the dishonest shills at the ADF.
I tried explaining what the law actually said to some idiot on facebook (that was a mistake). Even after providing links to dozens of cases, she kept telling me how ignorant I was and that god was not even allowed to be mentioned in school. It's a wonder some people manage to breathe without instructions.
But those are the kind of people places like the ADF count on, and they count on them to keep spreading the lies so that administrators in schools believe it too.
Posted by: FastLane | November 2, 2009 4:51 PM
This is kind of a "damned if you do..." situation for the school. It's just like the case from Albemarle County, VA a few years ago where Christians demanded access to the school's "backpack mail" system for their own religious fliers, but balked the moment that non-Christian religious groups wanted the same access. Make no mistake, the Alliance Defense Fund is being disingenuous. They do NOT want viewpoint neutrality here, they want preferential access for Christians.
Posted by: Pustulio | November 2, 2009 5:11 PM
The school should most certainly allow the child to hand out his fliers. It should also allow the children of wiccans, buddhists, santeristas and adherents of the FSM to do the same.
This may be good, if the Christians see this coming and drop their demand. Or it could be bad, if the Christians use schools as dumping-grounds for their propaganda, and try to out-deluge other religions by superior paper-dumping-power.
IANAL, but I really think the school was in the right here, morally if not legally: they wanted to allow kids to spread info for innocuous or useful events such as birthday parties and 4-H stuff, and didn't want the schools to become battlefields where powerful churches and dogmatic parents used kids to wedge their dogmas into the schools. And let's face it, if kids start handing out religious ads or tracts at school, chances are their parents are driving it.
The school administrators were trying to do the right thing while dealing with interest-groups that are probably not interested in being reasonable or fair. They may be wrong on the law, but let's show them a little respect for their intentions.
Posted by: Raging Bee | November 2, 2009 5:30 PM
I fail to see how ADF's intentions matter. They're on the right side in this one. When they turn hypocritical, we can make fun of them then.
Posted by: kehrsam | November 2, 2009 5:34 PM
I'd also like to ask the plaintiffs why they can't advertize their Jesus Camp in some venue other than schools. Haven't they heard of newspapers? Does every summer camp have to be advertized in schools?
The decision to send a kid to camp -- religious or not -- is made by the parents. So why not reach out directly to the parents? Using the kids as the delivery vehicle for such ads seems kinda skeevy to me.
Posted by: Raging Bee | November 2, 2009 5:37 PM
OT question: I'm now seeing ads on this blog for a book by Victor J. Stenger, supposedly dispelling all the lies that religious extremists tell about atheists and atheist arguments. Has anyone here read the book? If so, what are your thoughts on it?
Posted by: Raging Bee | November 2, 2009 5:48 PM
RB:
Who said they don't? Same goes for the 4H and the sleepover invitations. Flyer distribution is a service the school offers because (presumably) the parents want it. There is nothing untoward going on here.
Posted by: kehrsam | November 2, 2009 5:53 PM
Raging Bee - I have not read Stenger's latest, but Amazon does have 15 reader reviews for it plus you can search inside the book.
I did read his God: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist and gave it three stars.
The short version of my review of that book: I liked it as a handy reference guide to the collection of creationism's and philosophy's best or most popular arguments for the existence of God with a rebuttal by Stenger. My criticism was that I thought he often wrote his rebuttals as if he'd convincingly falsified a particular argument where I thought he hadn't come close on some. The link is to my review.
Therefore, I'd check the two, three, and four star reviews to understand whether he's improved in that area prior to your consideration.
Posted by: Michael Heath | November 2, 2009 6:08 PM
I would be so sure about that demo', the only reason I knew anything about ed-law and constitutional law was because I studied "social studies." I constantly run into teachers who think that it's okay to force kids to say the pledge, teach kids biology as told in Genesis, believe that "God was taken out of school," etc.
In other words, quite often, every couple of years or so, administration has to remind teachers that they can't force kids to say the pledge. I've been at schools where teachers were counseled and even reprimanded for teaching their faith as science, and I've run into both teachers and administrators who honestly believed that ANY reference to religion in any way, by any one, at any time, was illegal. Part of that whole "minority victim" thing that so many Christians want to believe.
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Bob,
I can say quite honestly that nope, didn't get a word of it in my grad level education program. I wandered over to a couple of undergrad programs to see what their required courses included, other than special ed. programs and their legal requirements, I didn't see a single program that required any law classes at all. When I did my admin grad program we had one class on ed law. Most of the coverage involved, as Kehrsam mentioned, legal requirements, Title 1, NCLB, etc. Most of the coverage of student rights, etc., came about because classroom teachers --> administrators wanted to know and asked the professor, otherwise the coverage was rather limited.
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Hell, over the years I've known some administrators who would not grade very high as administrators, people, human beings, let alone teachers. ;o)
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'bee,
Unfortunately you're wrong on this one. The moment the school opened up the forum and allowed for materials to be sent home, they cannot deny one organization access while allowing another organization the same access. They can limit solicitations based on appropriateness, IE flyers for the local strip club, no go, but they can't deny based on viewpoint. That's why these cases ultimately become so amusing and, were I a parent in this district, I would, once ADF wins (which they will) set up an organization to put out atheist, wiccan, free thinker literature to the kids. Christian parents will freak out and try to stop it, proving the hypocrisy. But, until this (almost inevitably) happens, ADF is right.
Posted by: dogmeatib | November 2, 2009 6:16 PM
Couple things.
1. Most administrators are not teachers, even if they once was, even if they once thought they wanted to be. Administrators frequently serve their required minimum time in the classroom and move on. It's not unusual to find administrators who did the minimum, met the standards well, but just weren't very charismatic. They tend to see the administrative role as a 'promotion' from teaching while most good teachers would rather (in the words of one of my colleagues) 'stick pins in their eyes' than take an admin job. Of course plenty of exceptions but, quite simply, they are such radically different jobs now that most of the teachers I know and consider good would not succeed or be happy as an administrator, and most administrators lack the temperament to be good teachers. May be a good thing--most of the poor principals I've known (and I've known a lot) were too floppy or empathetic and so were constantly outmaneuvered or bullied by kids and parents. Many principals lack the odd disconnected determination to help kids grow regardless of all else. That is absolutely true for me; in fact, I've been recruited a time or two toward admin or dept. chairs and the thought (sweetened even by a 20 K raise) created a creeping liquid horror that I can't adequately express.
Of course administrators mainly are interested in order while teachers are less so, but only because somebody else does the order job. Many good teachers in high school are actually interested in creating a kind of disorder (that applies to me, because I teach journalism.)
Aside: in our school system, we're told to (and administrators do) refer to students and parents as 'clients.'
Hence the tension. When given the chance, administrators make decisions this way: 1, how can I keep my school quiet and orderly? 2, how can I avoid parent unhappiness translated as phone calls, e-mails, and complaints in general? 3, how can I avoid attracting the attention of any lawyer anywhere on the face of the earth? 4, how can I raise test scores and conform to NCLB? 5, how can I improve real learning? and 6, given 1-5, can I do the right thing regarding the Constitution?
2. I'd read this case a little differently. Tinker established a protected 'core' class of speech that is especially important in schools--mainly religious and political speech. In that light there's an argument that the religious flier is more protected from censorship than the birthday invite or the solicitation for another crappy fundraiser to buy band uniforms. It is on the level of a flier for a political candidate (though it may take some good lawyering to equate a political candidate with a summer camp solicitation.)
It's commonly considered in school law cases that equity makes a difference, but in First Amendment issues there is an inherent and well-defined inequity. That's why raunchy speeches and drug-funny t-shirts get censored while parallel offense--polarizing political speeches and aggressive political and religious t-shirts--do not.
So I'd like to hear the analysis of the case from the lawyers.
Posted by: ice9 | November 2, 2009 6:49 PM
ice9 - IANAL but your argument appears better suited for high schoolers than elementary students like the court may deal with in this case.
Posted by: Michael Heath | November 2, 2009 7:13 PM
ice9: Ageed.
Posted by: kehrsam | November 2, 2009 8:07 PM
kehrsam:
"I fail to see how ADF's intentions matter. They're on the right side in this one. When they turn hypocritical, we can make fun of them then."
You and I may disagree on this but I think it's a safe bet that they're being hypocrites most, if not all, of the time.
Posted by: democommie | November 2, 2009 8:57 PM
They can limit solicitations based on appropriateness, IE flyers for the local strip club, no go, but they can't deny based on viewpoint.
Perhaps -- but judging "based on appropriateness" could mean not allowing ANY church to advertize its events at a school, which could be construed (by the kids at least) as a school's endorsement of that event -- especially if the Christian churches out-advertize the minority religions, and create an appearance of established superiority over all other religions. (Christian churches are well known to bully both kids and adults like that, wherever they can.)
IANAL, as I said before, so if the law says the school has to allow flyers for religious events to be distributed, then that's what the law says. But I still feel that: a) the administrators' policy sounds to me like a decent compromise between the desire to provide a useful service and the tendency to shoehorn religion into schools wherever possible; and b) the plaintiffs' motives for litigating this are less than honorable, and they have plenty of other places where they can advertize.
Posted by: Raging Bee | November 2, 2009 10:01 PM
My school/district would not have allowed the boy to distribute the fliers, unless the group followed the rules.
All fliers must be submitted to the district level. Outside groups must supply enough fliers for all the children in the district of the right age group. Not giving them to every child in the district (barring age rules) would be discrimination. Our district has 3 soon to be 4 5A High Schools and covers 4 or 5 different towns.
I think they must count them out for each school. (They should be required to count them out for each classroom, because why should we spend out time counting out their ads).
The reason for this rule is some groups were telling campuses that because we print Site Based and PTO fliers we had to print their fliers on our dime. No Site based and PTO are school organizations with their own budgets. They pay for their copies out of their budgets. Some new clerks fell for this scam before the admin/veteran staff could stop them.
If I remember correctly fliers with spelling and grammar errors are returned to the group and they can resubmit them after the errors are fixed. People were writing the newspaper complaining about "our" errors on 3rd party fliers.
What makes me mad is we have to let a church use our building. Teachers have complained repeatedly that supplies in student desks are being stolen only on the nights the church uses our building. I pitched a huge fit - when they took my personal projector cart with my personal projector and a grant laptop to use in their services. I ended up locking up the cords, since I couldn't lock up the cart. The custodian got my number out of our emergency box and called me at home to come fix it. She didn't need the phone to hear my response.
Then they got their own projector. Lost the cord and blamed me. I gave them my box o' cords (I'm the tech person on campus, because I can do basic trouble shooting). Box o' cords is were I throw all the odd cords and bits and pieces IT leaves in rooms. They expected me to go through the box and find their cord. Then threw a fit when their cord wasn't there. So sad so bad go buy a new one.
Posted by: Kimberly | November 2, 2009 10:56 PM
Kimberly:
Why do you hate MerKKKa?;)
Posted by: democommie | November 3, 2009 6:11 AM
Kimberly: My friend who was an Asst Principal faced a similar situation and got the District Administration to start billing the "church" for the extra custodial services their meetings required. This is perfectly legal under the Equal Access Act, so long as the fee is "proportional," or "appropriate." (I don't recall the applicable wording from the statute). It took about two hours to set things right, so the church was billed $25 per meeting. There is no right to borrow state-owned equipment, so if they wanted a projector or a computer they needed to bring one.
Posted by: kehrsam | November 3, 2009 7:26 AM
kehrsam:
You are consistent in your treatment of law and fair in your application of it. I hate you for that!;)
Posted by: democommie | November 3, 2009 9:29 AM
Simple solution: Require that at least two kids first get parental permission for each specific flier before they hand out copies. Courts never oppose parental involvement.
Parents are likely to cooperate with each other: "I'll sign off on your soccer league flier if you'll do the same for our church picnic."
Then gradually increase the number of permissions required so that eventually only families with mainstream opinions can get enough parental backing to hand out fliers.
No "singling out of religious literature for special regulation" but the same effect. I'm surprised that (for example) anti-gay school administrations haven't done this sort of thing already with regard to clubs.
Posted by: ttch | November 5, 2009 2:36 PM
ttch: Interesting idea, but illegal.
Posted by: kehrsam | November 5, 2009 3:15 PM