NEW YORK - Officials with a Baldwinsville, N.Y., school may have violated the constitutional free speech rights of a kindergarten student, according to a decision handed down today by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. The panel remanded the case back to a federal district court for further consideration.
The student included an image of Jesus and other religious elements in a poster created in fulfillment of a homework assignment on how to save the environment. School officials rejected one version of the poster and then obscured one portion of the second version of the poster when it was placed on display at an assembly, citing concerns over its "religious" nature.
"The First Amendment applies to all Americans--and that includes children. Public school officials cannot censor a student's religious expression merely because it is religious," said ADF Senior Counsel Joseph Infranco. "If 5-year-old Antonio's take on preserving the environment is that only God can save the world, then it is his right to express that view. Religious speech is not second class speech in the eyes of the Constitution."
The second version of the poster prepared by the student, Antonio Peck, who attended Catherine McNamara Elementary School as a kindergarten student during the 1999-2000 school year, depicted a robed, praying figure of Jesus, a church with a cross, people picking up trash for recycling, children holding hands around a globe, clouds, trees, a squirrel, and grass. School officials ordered the Jesus figure obscured when they placed in on display at the assembly.
Today, the 2nd Circuit panel disagreed with a federal district court decision that upheld the school's decision: "In our judgment, however, the district court overlooked evidence that, if construed, in the light most favorable to Pecks, suggested that Antonio's poster was censored
not because it was unresponsive to the assignment..., but because it offered a religious perspective on the topic of how to save the environment."
"The Supreme Court has recognized that 'students in the public schools do not shed their constitutional rights upon entering the schoolhouse gate,'" Infranco observed. "Today's opinion from the 2nd Circuit is well in line with that principle."
The case,
Peck v. Baldwinsville Central School District, which was funded by the Alliance Defense Fund from 1999-2003, was litigated by non-ADF attorneys. ADF-allied attorney Brian Raum of New York's Gucciardo Law Firm served as local counsel. The full text of today's 2nd Circuit opinion can be read at
www.telladf.org/UserDocs/PeckOpinion.pdf.
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