School sued over ban on Jesus costume
by Jim Brown
February 23, 2007
(OneNewsNow.com) - - A Pennsylvania school district is being sued for prohibiting a fourth-grader from wearing a Jesus costume to his school's Halloween parade and party. A federal lawsuit has been filed on behalf of the ten-year-old, who attended Willow Hill Elementary School in the Abingdon School District in the city of Glenside.The complaint alleges that Willow Hill Elementary officials ordered all students to wear a costume on Halloween, telling the children they would otherwise be "isolated" from the school's scheduled parade and party. Since the plaintiff and his mother have objections to pagan elements of the holiday based on their Christian beliefs, the boy chose to dress up as Jesus Christ.
On Oct. 31, however, Willow Hill principal Dr. Patricia Whitmire told the fourth-grader's mother that his costume would violate the school's religion policy and required that the youngster remove his 'crown of thorns' and not identify himself as Jesus. According to the boy's attorney, Matt Bowman with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), the school's response constituted religious intolerance.
"The school principal censored the student and told him he couldn't be ‘Jesus Christ' at this Halloween party that had costumes of every other kind -- disgusting and scary and supernatural," Bowman says. "And it's patently ridiculous," he asserts, "to say that in this context ... you can't have a Jesus costume. It's ridiculous, and it's yet another demonstration of how hostile the public schools have become to Christianity.'
The ADF affiliate says school officials acted unconstitutionally by banning his client's costume on the grounds that it was "religious." Furthermore, the lawyer notes, the principal and staff at Willow Hill Elementary even went so far as to suggest to the Christian student that he remove the crown of thorns that identified his costume as one of Jesus and instead "represent a Roman emperor -- who, by the way, many [of whom] killed Christians and Jesus Christ. They didn't see the irony of that suggestion."
In any event, Bowman asserts, "the principal censored this student, singled him out for censorship because he was dressed as ‘Jesus Christ,' and every other student could dress as whoever they wanted to be.' Meanwhile, he points out, other students were allowed to dress up as devils, witches, a skeleton covered with blood, and the like.
In suing on the Christian student's behalf, Bowman says he is seeking to have the court declare the actions of the Abington School District unconstitutional and send the message that schools cannot silence religious speech.
