Students suspended for passing out candy canes sue school
By The Associated Press
01.15.03
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SPRINGFIELD, Mass. — A group of Westfield High School students given suspensions for handing out candy canes with religious messages to classmates is suing school officials in federal court claiming their First Amendment rights were violated.
Seven students were given one-day in-school suspensions for breaking a school rule prohibiting the distribution of anything unrelated to school activities or the curriculum.
The students are waiting for a hearing before the school board to appeal those suspensions, but six of them are asking a federal judge to declare the school’s policy unconstitutional.
“This policy chills their speech,” said Mat Staver, a lawyer for Liberty Counsel, a religious civil liberties and legal defense organization based in Orlando, Fla. “It puts them in a position where they have to give up their freedom of speech for fear they might be disciplined.”
Staver, who is representing the students in a lawsuit filed Jan. 13 in U.S. District Court in Springfield, cited the Supreme Court’s 1969 decision Tinker v. Des Moines Indep. Community School District. In that case the Court said students are allowed to engage in speech during non-instructional time as long as it does not interfere with the operation of the school.
The suit also asks that the students’ suspensions be removed from their files.
“This is a disciplinary suspension that none of the students want on their records,” Staver said. “One of our clients wants to enter the military academy. A suspension of this nature could be devastating to that prospect.”
School Superintendent Thomas McDowell and Westfield High School Principal Thomas Daley did not immediately return telephone calls from the Associated Press.
The students, who are members of the school’s Bible club, have said they asked Daley if they could hand out the candy canes and religious messages just before Christmas.
When they were told not to, the students ignored their principal and passed out about 450 candies and attachments. The notes attached to each candy cane gave a religious explanation of the peppermint treat, detailing how its “J” shape stands for Jesus and its red and white stripes symbolize Christ’s blood and purity.
They also included a prayer and a message that read, in part, “It is not a prayer that saves you. It is trusting Jesus Christ that saves you.”
Stephen Grabowski, a 16-year-old junior who says he is a born-again Christian, said suing the school system is the best way he knows how to stand up for his rights.
“We want to show students in other schools that they have the right to stand up for their faith and speak out for what they believe in,” Grabowski said yesterday. “If we were to back down on this, we wouldn’t be taking a stand. We don’t want to be stepped on.”
McDowell has said the school system follows guidelines set by the U.S. Department of Justice that say individual schools should not make separate rules governing the distribution of religious and nonreligious material.
The students were told they couldn’t pass out the candy canes, he has said, because students aren’t allowed to hand out anything unrelated to the curriculum.
The case has caught the attention of student free-expression watchdogs.
“The Constitution does allow for some distribution by students during the school day as long as the material does not interfere with school activities,” said Mike Hiestand, a lawyer with the Arlington, Va.-based Student Press Law Center. “A blanket ban on all independent distribution would seem to go too far.”
A similar lawsuit involving a 5-year-old boy from Egg Harbor Township, N.J., who wanted to give his classmates pencils or candy canes with evangelical Christian messages was rejected by a federal judge. It’s now before the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Previous
Students fight suspensions over handing out candy canes
Massachusetts high school principal suspends seven, then delays the suspensions, for distributing candy with religious messages.
01.03.03
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