Ruling Against Christian Speaker Appealed to Ninth Circuit
by Jim Brown
May 20, 2004
(AgapePress) - A civil liberties group is appealing a case involving a motivational speaker who was barred from addressing an assembly of middle school students in Montana.Two years ago, School District No. 10 in Dillon rescinded its invitation to Jaroy Carpenter because of his affiliation with an evangelical group called the Dawson McAllister Association (DMA). Carpenter had been invited to help Dillon middle school students cope with a rash of teen suicides and automobile deaths. But one member of the school board and a county attorney claimed Carpenter's Christian faith and affiliation with DMA might cause the middle school to be in violation of the alleged "separation of Church and State." (See Earlier Article)
Casey Mattox with The Rutherford Institute is Carpenter's attorney. Mattox is asking the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse a district court ruling in favor of the school district's motion to dismiss the case. He says the school misunderstands the First Amendment's Establishment clause.
"If Jaroy Carpenter can be denied the opportunity to speak at a school on complete secular, perfectly permissible topics -- and if he can be forbidden from speaking at a school because of the fact that he has worked with the Dawson McAllister Association and that he himself has sincere Christian religious beliefs -- then that just has really frightening implications for a host of other people," the attorney says.
Mattox maintains that his client's right to free exercise of religion was abridged and that, like everyone else, people with deeply held religious beliefs have the right not to be discriminated against because of those beliefs.
"We're hopeful that the court will take this opportunity to highlight that that's impermissible for a government actor to make decisions putting religious persons and persons who are connected to religious organizations in a disfavored status because of their beliefs and associations," Mattox states.
According to the Institute, at the time of Dillon's invitation, Carpenter had made more than 200 secular presentations at school assemblies around the country and had never addressed religion or sought to proselytize those in attendance. When the district withdrew its invitation to Carpenter, many other area schools that had agreed to hold the assemblies rescinded their offers as well.
