Why would Christian lawyers argue for the right of a high school student to display a sign that reads “Bong Hits 4 Jesus”?
The attorneys filed friend-of-the-court briefs on the student’s behalf with the U.S. Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments today.
The case began in 2002 when Joe Frederick, then a senior at Juneau-Douglas High School in Alaska, stood along a parade route with a message he hoped would create a stir and maybe even get him on TV.
Deborah Morse, then the school principal, confiscated Frederick’s sign and suspended him.
“She suspended me for five days and I couldn’t believe I was being suspended for a free-speech experiment,” Frederick told KTUU-TV. “And furthermore, after quoting Thomas Jefferson, ‘Speech limited is speech lost,’ Ms. Morse (the principal) responded, ‘You’ve just earned another five-day suspension.’ ”
Bruce Hausknecht, judicial analyst for Focus on the Family Action, said it’s important schools strike a proper balance between the students’ rights and school officials’ interests in a safe learning environment.
“While Christians generally support the right of schools to maintain discipline, there has been a disturbing trend in recent years of schools prohibiting only Christian speech while allowing other speech antithetical to Christian belief,” he said.
For example, in the case of Harper v. Poway Unified School District, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a school’s right to ban a student from wearing a T-shirt with a biblical reference to homosexuality. The school allowed a pro-homosexual message by other students.
The ACLU, in that case, argued in favor of censoring religious speech.
“And the Ninth Circuit – in a previous case – had held that parental rights ‘ended at the schoolhouse door,’ ” Hausknecht said. “Taken together, it's obvious that liberal, activist courts are trampling the rights of Christians while paving the way for secular, anti-Christian indoctrination.”
Kelly Shackelford, chief counsel of the Liberty Legal Institute, said religious liberty experts were encouraged by what they heard in court today.
“The good news is that [justices] were clearly understanding [the implications],” he said. “For instance, Justice Alito said that the argument that the school was making was – and this is a quote – ‘very disturbing.’ ”
A ruling in favor of the student, Shackelford said, would make it very difficult for school officials to censor religious expression:
“If [the student] can say something as outrageous as what he said, then it’s going to be a lot harder to censor some kid for sharing his beliefs or having his religious beliefs in an assignment.”
Hausknecht agreed that the case’s outcome is pivotal.
“Even though we don't approve -- or even understand -- the message on this banner, we as Christians do not want to see our First Amendment rights eroded any further than they already have been,” he said.
Hausknecht said he expects the court is release a ruling in late June.
