High School Nixes Plan to Censor Christian Grad's Speech
by Jim Brown
June 11, 2004
(AgapePress) - A Pennsylvania high school has changed its decision to censor a graduating senior's valedictory speech by insisting that he take out any references to God or Jesus. The law firm that intervened on the Christian student's behalf is applauding the school for choosing to rethink its position.Northport Bradford High School in Rome, Pennsylvania, told Stephen Laudermilch he would have to edit his proposed commencement address and was not allowed to make reference to God or his "Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." The student then contacted Liberty Counsel, a Florida-based Christian law firm, which sent letters communicating to school officials that they were acting unconstitutionally.
The firm's General Counsel, Mat Staver, says the school officials were told that Liberty Counsel could either be a friend to them -- if they took a neutral position toward students' graduation messages, or a foe, if they attempted to censor Stephen Laudermilch's address.
Staver feels that the administrators at Northport Bradford High School were not hostile to the Christian message, as is sometimes the case in such disputes, but were simply uninformed about what the law required the school to do. "I believe that school officials here were really trying to do the right thing," he says, "but were actually listening to the wrong sources, and they were assuming that the safest road to follow is that of censorship."
However, after being presented with their options, the school officials had a change of heart and finally, just a day or two before the Christian teen was to make his speech, said that he could give his remarks uncensored. "So that was a great victory for this particular student," Staver says, "and also for religious freedom and freedom of speech."
The Liberty Counsel attorney notes that while schools may be gun-free zones and drug-free zones, "they are not religion-free zones." He points out that the First Amendment applies to young people as American citizens. "Student's don't lose their Constitutional rights when they step foot on the graduation platform," Staver says.
