SAN DIEGO — Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund filed an appeal Wednesday in a case involving the right of Christian students to freely express their viewpoint on controversial issues such as homosexual behavior.
“Christian students at public schools are not second-class citizens when it comes to their free speech rights. This is a case about viewpoint discrimination, pure and simple,” said ADF Legal Counsel Tim Chandler. “We appealed this very important case because it appears the lower court believes it is more important to be politically correct than constitutionally correct. The First Amendment doesn’t just protect speech that parrots the mantra of a few public school officials and stop there. The Christian viewpoint is protected, too.”
ADF attorneys filed a lawsuit in June 2004 on behalf of then Poway High School sophomore Chase Harper. In November 2005, Harper’s younger sister Kelsie, also a student at Poway High School, was added to the lawsuit. On Jan. 24, a district court ruled in favor of the Poway Unified School District, saying school officials did not break the law by suppressing the free speech of Christian students expressing their viewpoint on homosexual behavior.
The controversy began when Chase Harper wore a T-shirt expressing his religious viewpoint on homosexual behavior during the “Day of Silence,” an event sponsored by the school’s “Gay-Straight Alliance.”
A school official demanded that Chase Harper replace his T-shirt, but Harper refused and complied with the official’s orders to sit in the office for the rest of the school day. During that time, Harper underwent “counseling” by school officials. In addition, a deputy sheriff interrogated him about his religious beliefs and also took a number of photographs of him. It wasn’t until shortly before the end of the school day that officials notified Harper’s parents, who were told that he had been sent to the office and suspended over a T-shirt with a “negative” message on it.
“If school officials get to decide which messages are ‘positive’ and which messages are ‘negative,’ then free speech is rendered null and void,” said Chandler. “We hope the appellate court will put an end to this injustice.”
A copy of the notice of appeal filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California in the case
Harper v. Poway Unified School District can be read at
www.telladf.org/UserDocs/HarperAppeal.pdf. An appeal of the court’s ruling on a motion for preliminary injunction in the case is concurrently awaiting review at the U.S. Supreme Court (
www.telladf.org/news/story.aspx?cid=3902).
ADF is a legal alliance defending the right to hear and speak the Truth through strategy, training, funding, and litigation.
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