Written by Don Byrd
Earlier this month, the Rankin County School District in Mississippi was found in contempt of court and ordered to pay $7,500 for unlawfully promoting religion in school in violation of a 2013 agreement that resolved a church-state lawsuit filed on behalf of a student by the American Humanist Association.
In finding the school district “failed to honor its end of the agreement,” the court reminded: “Parents don’t drop off their children at the school house door to have their child’s religious beliefs affirmed, questioned or compromised.” You can read the judge’s order here.
For me, the best part of this story is not the legal arguments but the human element, beautifully reported in the Jackson Free Press. It is worth a read to understand such disputes from the plaintiff’s point of view. Magdalene Bedi, now a student at American University, was a high school junior 2 years ago when her suit was filed. She describes a change in attitude among her classmates.
Here is an excerpt:
For the first two weeks after the lawsuit went public, lawyers at AHA kept Bedi anonymous, and to her dismay, her classmates and peers reacted sourly.
“There was almost no vocal support for the lawsuit,” she said. “Some people thought it wouldn’t win, others thought I was being actively aggressive against the Christians, and they didn’t see what was illegal about the case.”
…
By November, Bedi was relieved by the consent decree and hoped to finish her senior year on a positive note. The ACT Ceremony [which opened with a Christian prayer delivered by a local minister] stunned Bedi. She said it felt as though all she had fought for was a lost cause.
But things had started to change in her peers’ minds, because after the ceremony, some of them gathered around her, buzzing, saying things like “We know it’s illegal now!” Bedi said since taking an AP government course, other students began to understand what made the high school’s actions illegal.
Civics! Education! Read the whole thing. And thank you to Ms. Bedi for having the courage to stand up for important religious liberty principles that protect all students. They could not be enforced without plaintiffs willing to hold school officials accountable for their use of religion in schools.
