Lawsuits against SYATP.

[Kimberlee Wood Colby]

Just to echo what others have said, the Center for Law and Religious Freedom
gets numerous inquiries every year from students and teachers encountering
obstacles from school administrators regarding SYATP.  After 15 years, a
practitioner is reluctant to just chalk it up to "an occasional misguided
school administrator."  There are just too many problems encountered every
year.  
 
Also, the questions that ADF, CLS, ACLJ, etc., field every year almost
certainly represent a small percentage of the students and teachers whose
right to meet for 15 minutes at the flagpole once a year is being hindered
or denied.  Most students and certainly most teachers will not pursue
getting any legal advice when the school principal tells them they can't
attend or can't publicize a once-a-year event.  The frequency of lawsuits on
an issue really does not paint an accurate picture of the everyday
experience of students and teachers wishing to practice their religion in
the public schools.  (And yes, that is probably true for the opposite
proposition that other schools allow things they should not on a fairly
regular basis.)  
 
The DOE guidelines certainly have helped the SYATP situation, but there are
a lot of school administrators who are: 1) still afraid of the ACLU, etc.,
filing a lawsuit if they allow any religious activity; 2) haven't kept up on
the developments in the law since they were in education college in the '70s
(and who can blame them); or 3) are simply hostile to religion.  All 3
factors contribute to the annual problems around SYATP.  But a problem
nevertheless exists.
 
Kim Colby

  _____  

From: religionlaw-bounces at lists.ucla.edu
[mailto:religionlaw-bounces at lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of Ed Brayton
Sent: Tuesday, September 26, 2006 9:01 AM
To: Law & Religion issues for Law Academics
Subject: Re: Lawsuits against SYATP.


Brad Pardee wrote: 

Ed,
 
You wrote, "And if, as you say, most of those situations are cleared up by a
letter explaining the law, is it really an attempt to suppress, or is it
merely ignorance of the law? Seems the latter would be a far more reasonable
description of what is going on."
 
Certainly there are some who are ignorant of the law and simply require the
explanation.  But what I've seen as I've tried to follow news stories like
this over the years is that it's just as certain that there are those
administrators who are hostile to things such as See You At The Pole, and
for those individuals, they're working on the assumption that people won't
fight an authority figure on the point.  In those cases, the letter doesn't
merely serve as an explanation of the law.  It also serves notice that their
bluff is being called, and so they back down, knowing that they would lose.
 
While it's uncharitable to assume that all of these situations are the
result of animus against such events, it's equally naive to assume that none
of these situations are merely harmless, well-intentioned ignorance.

I'm sure you're correct that there are a few such people out there; there is
no position so dumb that you can't find at least a few people who would take
it. But it seems to me that the statement I quoted is still rhetorical
overkill. The acceptance of this event as constitutional is about as
universal as it gets in this area of the law. Even groups like the ACLU and
Americans United, groups that are regularly accused by the ADF of trying to
drive all religion out of the public square, are in complete agreement that
SYATP is constitutional. Aside from an occasional misguided school
administrator (we've got, what, half a dozen, maybe a dozen, cases out of
the thousands of schools where this event takes place every year?), whose
decisions are easily changed by a letter explaining the law, no one has ever
tried to stop the event from taking place. And there certainly hasn't been
any "constitutional showdown" over it because there is all but universal
agreement on the legal question. There are lots of areas of church/state
law, like prayer at graduation ceremonies, where there is vast disagreement
over what should and should not be allowed to take place. But here there is
almost unanimous agreement that this event can take place. It just seems
like the kind of overheated rhetoric that is far too common in this area. I
think it lends far more heat than light.

Ed Brayton

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.ucla.edu/pipermail/religionlaw/attachments/20060926/3fc0101c/attachment.htm