Settlement Vindicates Christian Girl's Free-Speech Rights at School
by Jim Brown
April 15, 2005
(AgapePress) - A fifth-grader who was once barred by her Colorado school district from inviting fellow students to her Christian Bible club has won a major free-speech victory.After Gilpin County school officials ordered Melanie Unruh to stop inviting fellow students to the club known as "God's Girlz," she filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the district. Now both parties have reached a settlement. The agreement has resulted in the district's adoption of a new policy -- one that does not discriminate against students passing out material expressing a Christian viewpoint.
Unruh's attorney is Jeremy Tedesco with the Alliance Defense Fund. He is satisfied with the outcome of the case and feels his client's First Amendment rights have been vindicated. However, prior to the agreement, he says school officials had been censoring his client's free speech.
Tedesco says Unruh's school received complaints about the flyers from several parents. As a result, he says school officials told Melanie she could no longer pass out her material as all other students are permitted to do on a hand-to-hand basis during non-instructional times. "They actually required Melanie to ask her parents to get advance permission from every child's parent before she could hand out an invitation to that child," the lawyer notes.
ADF tried to resolve the situation with the Gilpin County School District informally but, unfortunately, Tedesco says, "sometimes we have to step up to litigation" -- and that proved necessary in Unruh's case. However, he says the district officials were responsive to the lawsuit, "and I think, really, once we got opposing counsel involved, it was very clear to the school that they had done wrong."
And to the school officials' credit, the attorney adds, "They turned around immediately and started to work with us to craft policies that comported with the Constitution and respected our client's rights." In the settlement of Unruh v. Gilpin County RE-1 School District, et al., the Colorado district agreed that it will no longer bar the fifth-grader's fliers inviting schoolmates to her Bible club from being passed out by her during non-instructional time.
The Gilpin County School District also agreed that it will allow outside groups to distribute announcements and advertisements to students via a table and bulletin board. Unruh's school had previously refused to distribute flyers for a vacation Bible school coordinated by the student's mother even though it distributed the flyers of other groups.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
