ADF Sues School That Chose Scrapping Display Over Including Cross
by Jim Brown and Jenni Parker
March 10, 2005
(AgapePress) - A California school district is being sued for infringing on the free-speech rights of two Christian parents who purchased tiles to be included in a commemorative wall display, but whose contribution to the school project was censored after they arranged their tiles in the shape of a cross.In the Manhattan Beach Unified School District, parents were recently invited to buy personalized tiles for a wall in a local school as part of a fundraising program. But when Don and Meagan Burrows purchased a group of the commemorative tiles and placed them in the shape of a cross, the district dismantled their symbol, arguing that it violated the so-called separation of church and state.
Alliance Defense Fund attorney Jeremy Tedesco says the school district illegally censored the Burrows' expression. "There's at least four cases in the lower federal district courts that have held that, when schools devise these kinds of programs, they have to include the speech of all," he insists.
When school programs create what are known as open forums, in which "they have no kind of content control or editorial control over what goes on the wall," Tedesco explains, "they can't exclude religious speech. They have to treat it in the same terms as secular speech."
According to the ADF attorney, the Burrows' cross was removed after one individual complained that the tiles represented an unconstitutional endorsement of a specific religion by a state entity. However, Tedesco contends that it is "a complete misconception" to believe religious expression violates the Constitution of the United States, which he says "in reality guarantees freedom of religious expression."
What's more, the ADF lawyer says, the school district appears to be employing an unfair double standard. "There are other religious expressions on the wall, Christian expressions," he notes, citing for example, a tile bearing the slogan, "God bless the USA." And, he adds, "There's also one tile that displays a church with a cross on it." Yet neither of these religious-themed tiles have drawn protests or been subjected to discrimination by the district, Tedesco says.
ADF attorneys advised the district superintendent of the unconstitutionality of the school's actions, but the district's response was to order the entire wall of tiles torn down to avoid displaying the Burrows' cross-shaped tile arrangement. "Rather than doing what the Constitution demands, the school has decided to take the outrageous action of tearing down the tile wall," Tedesco says. "The school is silencing the speech of all to censor the speech of one."
That, the attorney asserts, is why ADF is suing the Manhattan Beach Unified School District in federal court on the Burrows' behalf. The legal group, America's largest legal alliance specializing in the defense of religious liberty, hopes to prevail in this case as it did last year in a similar suit against the Paradise Valley School District in Arizona.
