In California, a senior student is painting a mural that he intends to represent heaven. Other students agree that it looks like heaven — too much so, in fact, and they started a petition to have it changed. He originally agreed, but after being contacted by a Christian legal firm, he's going to fight.

The Contra Costa Times reports:

[Kyle] Trudelle is being represented by the Christian Law Association and the Gibbs Law Firm, both of Seminole, Fla. Gibbs and the association represented the parents of Terry Schiavo, who waged a years-long battle in national headlines to keep their daughter on life support despite her husband's wishes.

They have quite a track record, don't they? Their last high-profile client is dead.

In a May 24 letter to the school, Trudelle's lawyer, Charlotte Cover, urged the school to let Trudelle continue his painting, saying that it does not violate the separation of church and state because Kyle is not an employee of the school. "Instead, he is the Napa High School's client or 'customer.' As such, he has the right to religious speech in a government school that principals and teachers do not have," she wrote.

This is a rather interesting interpretation of the situation — and quite wrong, I think.

First, there is something strange about calling Kyle Trudelle a "customer" of the school. Is he paying the school something in order to put up a painting? If he's only a "customer" in the sense of getting an education there, that won't apply to his activity with the painting. If I'm a "customer" at Sears, can I start painting on their walls? Kyle's "customer" status will only affect him in the same way that it affects every other "customer" — which means that his religious speech can't be restricted any further than any other student's. Which brings us to...

Second, unless the school has opened up the walls to murals of varying sorts and painted by various students, it is not a "public" forum on any level. This means that the government can regulate the content of the messages being delivered. It is not a violation of Kyle Trudelle's free speech rights or religious liberties for the school to impose restrictions on what sorts of murals can be painted in such a context.

Finally, Charlotte Cover is falsely implying that the separation of church and state only applies to actions by government employees. In reality, the separation of church and state can also be violated when the state has outside actors do things for them. If the mural would be unconstitutional if painted by a school employee (and Charlotte Cover seems to imply that it might be), then it doesn't become constitutional merely because the school asks or allows someone else to paint it in the exact same spot. It remains government-endorsed because of the issue raised above: this isn't a public forum where reasonable observers should realize that the state has nothing to do with the messages being communicated.

I think that the Christian Law Association and the Gibbs Law Firm will lose this case, thus preserving their track record.

Read More:

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