School Revises Policy After Barring Student from Handing Out Tracts
by Jim Brown
October 12, 2005
(AgapePress) - A Christian law firm has intervened on behalf of a 15-year-old Virginia high school student who was suspended for three days for passing out a Christian tract at school. Now that firm is helping the school ensure that its policies on literature handouts do not interfere with students' religious freedom in the future. Officials at Fort Defiance High School initially objected to the tract because of its religious content. Later they changed their mind and said student Samantha Weatherholtz was not allowed to hand the literature out because it contained words that were blocked by the school's Internet filter.
Barb Weller, an attorney with the Florida-based Christian Law Association, has been working with the school to develop a new, constitutional literature distribution policy. "The reason this case is so important," she says, "is because many schools really do still think that students are not permitted to pass out religious tracts in school because of this alleged separation of church and state."
In fact, Weller adds, even if one assumes that the so-called separation of church and state is constitutionally legitimate, and the Christian lawyer says she is not prepared to "buy into that theory," she insists that any establishment clause-based restriction would only apply to teachers and other school employees. "It does not apply to students," she says.
According to the CLA spokesperson, the school's change of heart occurred after the Christian legal group informed Fort Defiance High officials that federal guidelines do permit students to distribute religious material. And now, although the suspension prompted Weatherholtz to enroll in a private school, other Christian students at Fort Defiance are now being permitted to hand out religious material.
The misunderstanding of the law that resulted in the school initially prohibiting the student's free exercise of her First Amendment rights is a common one, and not only among secularist public officials, Weller notes. "Many times it's Christian principals who refuse to let students pass out religious material," she says.
The reason this happens, the attorney explains, is that many times Christian school administrators suppose if they do not permit Christian students to hand out religious material, then they can also prevent such distribution of literature by "other groups like the Wiccans or others that maybe the Christian principals wouldn't want to have that material in their school."
These school officials "think they can keep it all out," Weller says, "but the fact of the matter is, they can't." And, in fact, she feels Christian school officials, of all people, should the ones to encourage students to hand out gospel tracts or otherwise share their faith in Christ.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
