Public schools are garnering many negative headlines these days for actions such as agenda-driven assignments, messing with traditional holidays, banning student prayer during a free period and planning to let boys into girls locker rooms.
But the influential Alliance Defending Freedom is putting one school district in the spotlight for making the right decision under the Constitution, offering an "attaboy" to Licking Valley School District in Ohio.
In a letter to the school board, ADF said it had learned that the atheist activist group Freedom from Religion Foundation recently asked the district to cancel an assembly by a Christian organization called Jubilee Gang. The group offers a secular program, with the religious components removed, that promotes honesty, integrity and good character. The district invited the group as part of its character-building education program.
"We write in support of the district's decision not to prohibit school assemblies that contribute to its educational program based on the personal religious beliefs of the presenters," the ADF letter said.
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"By advocating for the exclusion of people of faith from public life and – in particular – any participation in public schools, FFRF demonstrates that its demands are not based on law but on a blatant hostility to religion that directly conflicts with the First Amendment's protection of religious free exercise,' ADF said.
In a letter to Supt. David Hile in Newark, Ohio, Freedom from Religion Foundation Staff Attorney Rebecca Markert said it was wrong for the school to expose students "to a Christian proselytizing group," even if there was a "secular message the group claims to be promoting."
"Please notify us in writing of the steps your district has taken to remedy this matter," she demanded.
She argued it is "well settled that public schools may not advance or promote religion."
"Allowing an evangelical Christian organization access to your student body gives the appearance that Licking Valley Local School District endorses the program's message," she said.
However, the ADF noted in its letter that none of the information in the presentation was religious in nature, and the program's content was consistent with the school's curriculum.
"The assembly taught students to set goals, be a good example, make good choices, and persevere when you fail," the legal group said.
ADF emphasized the district was "not advancing religious at all."
"It simply offered the Jubilee Gang assembly as one means for students to receive training that would promote character building and good citizenship."
In fact, if the district had adopted FFRF's "antagonistic" position, ADF said, it would have "exhibited 'a pervasive bias or hostility to religion [that] undermine[s] the very neutrality the Establishment Clause requires.'"
"Your district was right to reject FFRF's unjustified demands and to provide students with the important information communicated at the Jubilee Gang assembly," said the letter, signed by ADF legal counsel Rory T. Gray, Jeremy Tedesco and J. Matthew Sharp.
Tedesco said public schools "should be commended when they decline to give in to unfounded threats by those who misunderstand the First Amendment.
"Licking Valley School District was right to reject Freedom From Religion Foundation's false view that neutrality toward religion requires schools to reject beneficial programs simply because they are presented by Christians," he said. "That is not neutrality but targeted religious discrimination that the First Amendment forbids."
Gray said attacking educational programs "that provide children with non-religious character-building lessons just because the presenters happen to be Christian is shameful."
"We hope other school districts follow Licking Valley's example and stand up to the illegitimate demands of anti-religious groups that distort the meaning of the First Amendment," he said.
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