Judge Says School Discriminated; Cross-Embossed Bricks Must Be Restored
by By Jim Brown
October 13, 2004
(AgapePress) - A federal court has found a Virginia high school guilty of viewpoint discrimination against religious expression. The ruling comes in response to a lawsuit filed on behalf of Rutherford Institute, which challenged Potomac Falls High School's decision to remove bricks engraved with the cross from a school walkway.For years, the Potomac Falls High School's parents organization, Parents Associated With the School (PAWS), has conducted "Walkway of Fame," a fundraising campaign to help student clubs and organizations raise money for school fieldtrips. The effort involves the sale of engraved bricks, which buyers can have personalized with a limited amount of text and a small symbol selected from a list of several icons, including the image of a cross. After purchase, the bricks are placed in the "Walkway of Fame" around the school's flagpole.
However, when one student's parents complained about the inclusion of bricks bearing the cross, the school decided to remove those bricks engraved with the Christian symbol. But according to The Rutherford Institute president John Whitehead, by taking those bricks out of the walkway, the school clearly violated the First Amendment Rights of the parents.
"The school actually went out and put metal plates over the bricks," Whitehead notes. Then the school further disrupted the walkway and trampled the purchasing parents' rights when, in response to the single complaint, they removed only the bricks that bore the cross symbol and replaced them with blank placeholders, supposedly in an attempt to avoid offending anyone. Several of the bricks that were removed had been in place for approximately a year.
"The parents came to us and felt that this was wrong," Whitehead says. "That's when we asked the school officials to change their minds. They didn't. We filed a lawsuit."
Rutherford Institute filed suit in U.S. District Court in 2003 on the parents' behalf, asking the federal court to order the school to put the cross-engraved bricks back in their rightful places around the flagpole. The attorneys argued that the school had created a limited public forum -- the walkway -- where people could express private messages and then, by removing only the bricks bearing the crosses, had violated the First Amendment rights of the parents who had purchased them.
Judge James Cacheris agreed and found in favor of the plaintiffs, ruling that Potomac Falls High School had indeed engaged in "impermissible viewpoint discrimination against expression with a religious viewpoint." Unless the ruling is appealed, the judge will require the school to restore the bricks engraved with the cross to the walkway.
Whitehead is hailing the decision by Judge Cacheris as a victory, both for free speech and for freedom of religion. "When a school allows different messages to be in a particular part of the school or a particular forum, they can't discriminate against the religious viewpoint," the Rutherford Institute spokesman says, "so that's basically what [the judge] held."
Whitehead adds that the ruling is "a good message to send the schools." All too often, he contends, public schools and other officials err on the wrong side of the Constitution and, "if something happens to be just marginally religious, they erase it."
