Written by Don Byrd
Public school hallways are no place for administrators to promote their religious beliefs. Students should be able to enter the building and walk from class to class without being proselytized by the same officials we have entrusted to educate them. Those officials should not be able to do in messages or pictures on the wall what they can’t do in person. So it’s unsurprising that a portrait of Christ hanging in the Jackson High School in Jackson, Ohio generated controversy. Five anonymous plaintiffs filed suit challenging the use of the picture as a violation of the separation of church and state.
Instead of taking it down, school officials initially tried to argue the picture was private speech. On Friday, however, they reached a settlement. The Columbus Dispatch reports:
In the settlement accepted yesterday by U.S. District Judge Algenon L. Marbley, the Jackson City School District agreed to pay $3,000 in damages to each of the suit’s five anonymous plaintiffs.
The district also will pay $80,000 to cover legal fees incurred by the Ohio chapter of the ACLU and the Freedom From Religion Foundation of Madison, Wis., which sued the district on behalf of the three parents and two students.
How much public money has been needlessly spent in attorney’s fees and damages and increased municipal insurance premiums due to government intransigence in clear cases like this one?
