First Amendment Defenders Win Suit For High School Bible Club
by Jim Brown
November 25, 2003
(AgapePress) - There has been an important religious freedom victory at a public high school in Washington State.A student-led Bible club at Shorecrest High School was initially denied recognition as an official "associated student body" or ASB. School officials cited concerns about violating the so-called "separation of church and state." But after the Rutherford Institute law firm applied legal pressure, the school backed down.
Institute attorney Casey Mattox does not believe the school officials intended to discriminate against Christians specifically, but rather that they were acting out of ignorance of the Constitution. He says it was "basically just an issue of misunderstanding what the First Amendment provides and what it means."
So the Rutherford Institute legal team set about correcting that misunderstanding. "We spoke with the principal and then worked with the school board attorney," Mattox says, "and they quickly recognized that they could not deny official recognition to the Christian Bible study group."
After the Institute made it clear to officials at Shorecrest High that they were violating the students' First Amendment rights, the Bible Club was granted the same access that other non-curricular clubs enjoy on campus. The club will now have equal access to school funding and be allowed to advertise their events over the loudspeaker and on school bulletin boards.
Maddox says cases like this one have become all too common across the U.S. "We just keep running into situations like this, where school districts just don't seem to get the message," he says. For instance, in a similar case in Washington State just last year, the lawyer says that school district still had not "gotten it," even a year later.
In that instance, Maddox notes, at the same time school officials were censoring the Bible club, they were providing funding for the school's "Swing Club" and a group called "Connecting Muslims and Non-Muslims."
