Schools Can't Discriminate Against Religious Flyers

Can public schools help a community group advance its religious agenda? In principle, schools are expected to treat all community groups equally - but even when it comes to something like handing out fliers that encourage students to join or attend something? The United States Supreme Court has let stand a Ninth Circuit Court ruling that says they should.

Crosswalk reports:

In 2000, the district banned his flyers advertising Christian summer camps after receiving complaints from parents about the flyers' religious overtones. In the flyers, Hills -- president of an organization called "A Little Sonshine from Arizona" -- was promoting 19 different camp classes such as wood-working and dance.  Included were two religious classes titled "Bible Heroes" and "Bible Tales."

According to Foundation for Religious Freedom:

"The more religious material comes through the state, it really puts an image that it really supports religion," said C.N. Coby Cohen, an attorney with the Anti-Defamation League... The literature in question, while referring to dancing, singing and appearances by "Bob the Tomato" and "Larry the Cucumber," also urged youths to read the Bible at an early age and become familiar with Jesus Christ.

It seems to me that when literature is distributed under the auspices of a school, then that school (and therefore also the state) is taking a certain amount of responsibility for it and placing at least a limited stamp of approval on it. To see how this is so, imagine if a local KKK group wanted to distribute flyers - do you think the school would insert such things into children's backpacks? No.

Now, if the school is justified in excluding certain social and political messages because the state shouldn't be seen as giving its approval to them, then we already have content-based discrimination. Moreover, I would argue that such discrimination is quite justified precisely because the government has a duty to only give explicit approval to some messages rather than others. The "other" messages can't be banned, but they also shouldn't be endorsed in any fashion.

If that is true, then the government is also justified in not doing anything to promote religion and religious messages. This would mean not taking any sort of active role in distributing or promoting the messages or events of any religious groups. This is not the same as passively allowing groups to use a school for meeting space but, rather, only refers to something that looks like active participation in the spreading of the message.

Read More:

• Secularism 101
• Separation of Church and State 101
• Religion in Public Schools