Florida Schools vs. 1st Amendment
The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear the case of a Florida high school student who was forced to paint over religious words and symbols she had included on a school mural. Attorneys for The Rutherford Institute had asked the court to overturn a 2004 ruling by the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of Bannon v. School District of Palm Beach County, in which the appeals court held that educators at Boca Raton Community High School had the right to exercise greater editorial control, i.e. the censoring of religious speech, because the murals constituted school-sponsored speech. In asking the high court to review the ruling, Institute attorneys charged that school officials had engaged in viewpoint discrimination in violation of the First Amendment when they ordered Sharah Harris to paint over religious references in her mural. Institute attorneys pointed out that students were specifically instructed to express themselves freely on the murals, barring offensive or profane speech, thus creating a limited public forum for student expression. A copy of the Institute’s brief is available here.
“This was a prime opportunity for the Roberts Court to show its commitment to First Amendment ideals, and I am sorry that they chose not to weigh in on what promised to be a critical religious freedom case,” said John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute. “George Bush, through his appointments to the Supreme Court, is creating a court that is deferential to authority in all its forms, and it is going to be very difficult for the little guy to prevail against such a judicial mindset.”
In late January and early February 2002, Boca Raton Community High School, a public high school in Palm Beach County, Florida, was undergoing renovations. In an effort to camouflage unsightly plywood panel barriers that had been placed around construction areas during construction, school administrators invited students to paint murals on these barriers as a beautification project. Students were to provide their own murals, and the only instructions given by school officials were that the murals not be profane or offensive and that the murals include the students’ own expression. Students were not required to present their proposed murals for prior approval and were permitted to express themselves freely in their artwork. Sharah Harris, then a senior at the high school and a member of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes Club, decided to participate in the project, along with other members of the club. Sharah and other FCA members painted several murals with religious messages: one mural proclaimed, “Because He Loved, He Gave” and had a cross in the background; another asked, “Jesus has time for you; do you have time for Him?”; and a third read, “God Loves You. What Part of Thou Shalt Not Didn’t You Understand? God.” Shortly after the murals were painted, school officials pulled Sharah out of class and instructed her to paint over all religious symbols and language, replacing the references to God and Jesus with neutral pronouns such as “He” and “Him.” Institute attorneys challenged determinations by both the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida and the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals that the mural project was not a public or limited public forum for expression and thus could be subject to the school’s interest in avoiding disruption from religious debate and of disassociating from a religious viewpoint.
Founded in 1982 by constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead, The Rutherford Institute is an international, nonprofit civil liberties organization committed to defending constitutional and human rights.
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