California School Sued for Banning “God”

Posted on June 16, 2007

We read:

“A Michigan public interest law firm filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the Poway Unified School District on Monday, arguing that school officials violated a math teacher’s constitutional rights when they order him to remove two banners with the words “God” and “Creator” on them from his classroom walls.

The lawsuit alleges that the school district violated Westview High School teacher Bradley Johnson’s freedom of speech when officials ordered him to take down the banners in January after more than 25 years of displaying them because they conveyed a religious message.

The banners, measuring approximately 7 feet long by 2 feet wide, carried the phrases: “In God We Trust,” “One Nation Under God,” “God Bless America,” “God Shed His Grace on Thee” and “All Men Are Created Equal, They are Endowed By Their Creator,” the lawsuit said.

All of which are phrases from either historical texts, like the Declaration of Independence, patriotic songs or the Pledge of Allegiance, said Robert Muise, an attorney with the Thomas More Law Center who is handling the case.

“Here you have educational banners that convey messages from our religious history,” Muise said Tuesday by phone, adding that the banners were “educational” in nature and serve a clear purpose in public schools, helping teachers, like Johnson, to educate students to be better informed citizens…..

Peter Scheer, the executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition agreed, saying that the phrases were a representation of America’s history, and as such, are an important aspect of a student’s education. “No one in their right minds would think that to read segments or excerpts from the great founding documents of this country which include invocations of the Almighty, that that could conceivably violate some students’ religious rights,” Scheer said.

In addition to alleging that the district violated Johnson’s California and U.S. constitutional rights by restricting his speech, the lawsuit said that this restriction “serves no educational purpose, is not reasonably related to any legitimated pedagogical concern, and conveys a government-sponsored message of disapproval of and hostility toward religion.”

Johnson is asking that the district be prohibited from enforcing such “viewpoint-based” restriction on certain educational messages and that he be awarded nominal damages for the past loss of his constitutional rights, as well as have the cost of litigation, attorney fees and other expenses covered.

“This treatment of things that are religious in nature of sort as a pathogen that needs to be removed from the public sector needs to be stopped,” Muise said. “We are in this for the long haul. If this is a case that needs to go all the way up the U.S. Supreme Court, we are certainly willing to do that.”

Source

The 9th Circus will side with the school so this WILL need to go to SCOTUS

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Comments

2 Responses to “California School Sued for Banning “God””

Dethanial on June 16th, 2007 6:19 pm

What don’t these meatheads understand about the consitution when
it says that congress will make no laws prohibiting the free exercise
of religion. They see where it says congress will make no laws establishing
religion and then stop reading.
Jon Batson on June 19th, 2007 10:25 am

We have made a bad bargain. We traded God for drugs. All the evils that followed are the makings of a new ‘Revelations’ sequel. Depression (from anti-depressants), mutilations, suicide, homicide and mass-murder. Our schools are putting out a generation unfit to serve in the military, to lead in business, to govern, to be responsible adults at all - assuming they grow up. If a child does not kill himself, he might be killed by another child on drugs. AT least when we had God in school, someone was watching, for according to the teachings I received in Sunday School, he is everywhere and sees what you do. Now there is no one looking and it doesn’t seem to matter what we do. Hmm. Let’s see. Take God out, put in condoms, drugs, psychs and a teaching system that says there is no real moral right or wrong; then reap insanity and death. Yeah, not a good bargain.