Suspension of Student Spawns Lawsuit Against San Diego School District

by Jim Brown
June 4, 2004

(AgapePress) - A San Diego school district is being sued after a student was suspended for wearing a T-shirt displaying the messages "Homosexuality is Shameful" and "Our School Embraced What God Has Condemned."

The Poway Unified School District is accused of violating the 16-year-old sophomore's civil rights. The federal suit filed by the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) claims that Chase Harper was suspended for expressing his Christian beliefs during the pro-homosexual "Day of Silence" observance in April. During that national event, high school and college students were urged to show support for homosexual, bisexual, and trans-gender students.

ADF lawyer Robert Tyler says public school officials engaged in unconstitutional suppression of speech.

"Our client wore a T-shirt that had a religious message with regard to homosexuality, and the school district disagreed with our client's viewpoint and told him to either take the T-shirt off or he would be disciplined," the attorney explains, noting the ironic nature of the warning.

"On a day that allegedly attempts to promote tolerance, apparently it's only tolerant of viewpoints that promote homosexuality and those viewpoints that school district agrees with -- not alternative viewpoints that may be more mainstream in America," Tyler says. Public school officials, he says, need to learn that they are not allowed to silence "constitutionally protected student speech just because they disagree."

According to Tyler, a school administrator told Harper to "leave his faith in the car" when his faith might offend others. The attorney says such a statement "in this age of alleged tolerance ... is disappointing, to put it mildly."

Harper v. Poway was filed on Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California. A spokeswoman for the Poway Unified School District declined to be interviewed.