Judge Allows Student Suit Over School's Commencement Song Censorship
by Jim Brown
May 11, 2004
(AgapePress) - A federal judge has refused to dismiss a case involving a Virginia high school student who was barred from singing a Celine Dion song at her graduation ceremony because of its religious content.Last April, a teacher acting as the senior class adviser at Windsor High School told senior Anna Ashby that lyrics to a pop song called "The Prayer" were too religious. Ashby then contacted the Rutherford Institute legal group, which filed a lawsuit challenging the Isle of Wight County School District over its censorship -- and recently, a judge for the Eastern District of Virginia agreed to allow the case to move toward trial.
Rutherford Institute president John Whitehead is applauding the federal judge's ruling to allow the case to proceed. He says the judge is apparently one who recognizes the importance of the constitutional issues involved. "I think the judge is going to decide on the First Amendment, and I think we do have a good First Amendment case," he says.
Whitehead notes that Ashby "was a good student" who was chosen to participate in the graduation ceremony after she volunteered. He says the school discriminated against her solely because the song she chose seemed to imply prayer and talk about God. "So I think that, as I've said to many people, the judge is going to look very carefully here, and I think he's going to be asking the school district 'what's the problem?'" he says.
Whitehead considers the opposing side's case to be particularly weak, considering the fact that the song in question is a pop song, "not a church hymn or anything like that -- it doesn't even mention God," he notes. He also anticipates that the judge will take into consideration guidelines issued by the U.S. Department of Education that permit student prayer and religious expression.
"Of any case that I've seen in the area of graduation prayer and those types of instances, this is one of those cases where I think the judge is really going to be prodding the school district to ask why they discriminated against this Christian lady," the attorney says.
Rutherford Institute's president notes that the organization gets flooded with similar cases each year around graduation time. He says if Ashby's case continues forward, there should be a trial by fall.
