On Friday, in a case I've been following lately, Judge Robert Echols issued a preliminary injunction ordering a Wilson County, TN school not to restrict advertising posters merely for having religious content. Lakeview Elementary was charged with censoring announcements of the annual See You At The Pole prayer event and Echols agreed that the policy allowed too broad a discretion considering the limited public forum established there for posting extra-curricular messages. He conceded, however, that school officials were trying to follow the law and his own order from a previous costly lawsuit in which they were found to have violated the separation of church and state in their coordination with many of the parents who became plaintiffs in this case. From his 39-page ruling (pdf):
[T]he Court finds that [school officials] were desirous of making decisions regarding the posters which were in compliance with school policy, the Court’s Order in Doe, and the Establishment Clause of the Constitution.
…
The Court is of the opinion that school administrators are trying to walk a fine constitutional line between Establishment Clause concerns, Free Speech rights of Lakeview students and parents,and the rights of other students and parents in light of the previous lawsuit… [I]t is understandable that the individual Defendants are trying to avoid future conflict. Possibly in an effort to alleviate such conflict, Defendants restricted the content of SYATP posters to the name of the event, date, time and place.The Court concludes that in doing so the Defendants missed a critical legal distinction. . . . The school may regulate the specific content of the posters only if the regulation of the speech is reasonable to preserve the purpose for which the forum was opened and the regulation is viewpoint neutral, i.e., it does not suppress expression merely because the school officials oppose the speaker’s point of view, or believe it to be controversial.
Interestingly, he reserved a rationale for restricting the religious content of messages, should they cross the line into clear proselytization (as, he said, in the candy cane case). The Bible verses and other common phrases (In God We Trust, God Bless America, etc.) here though did not come close, he said, to a violation of that type. Still, given that concern, his order does not broadly require the school to allow any and all religious messages, regardless of content, even in its limited public forum.
