School sued for barring VBS flyer
Jeff Johnson - OneNewsNow - 7/24/2008 11:00:00 AM
Patricia Regan works with her church's Vacation Bible School program. She knew that Hudson schools allowed community organizations to promote their events through flyers handed out to students. But now she is suing the school after they refused to allow the flyers to be distributed.
Joshua Bolinger, litigation counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, is representing Regan. "Ms. Regan submitted...the Vacation Bible School flyers, in accordance with the school's literature distribution policy," he argues. "And the district superintendent rejected those flyers the following day because of their religious content and viewpoint."
According to the attorney, the school district's response is clearly unconstitutional. "Schools really cannot ban the distribution of a Christian group's literature just because it's religious," he adds. "But, unfortunately, that's what we have here."
Bolinger says that while the school district refused to allow the Vacation Bible School flyers, they did allow the distribution of printed flyers for a wide variety of other community groups.
Despite the fact that content and viewpoint discrimination against religious speech is clearly forbidden by both the U.S. Constitution and numerous federal court decisions, says Bolinger, government entities continue to illegally treat Christians and their speech less favorably than non-Christian speakers and their messages.
