A Moment to Shine

Margaret is a first grader in the North Carolina School System who was recently given the right to hand out Easter invites to her classmates where the events were hosted by her church. Initially, Margaret was allowed to provide invites to church events to her classmates but not permitted to do so for 2017s Christmas events around the Holidays as the school district felt it coerced religious minorities to try and attend the functions. Margaret’s ban on Christmas invites was lifted by the school district after the American Center for Law and Justice intervened and wrote a letter to the school on her behalf.

Many different constitutional precedents could be weighed in support of Margaret and her mother who filed the petition. If this case ended up going to court, before it was resolved internally, the court would rule that student to student literature exchange is within the confines of First Amendment protections unlike teacher to student religious literature exchange. If a teacher were to coerce students into adopting or supporting a specific religion, then the court would have a problem, but giving an invitation is not a demand to attend but rather Margaret being a supporter of her Church’s events, and as a first grader, she garners more leeway in First Amendment's protections than adults. This case represents a violation of the first grader's rights under the Equal Access Act (1984) that states “cannot discriminate against student extracurriculars based on religious, political, philosophical, or other content of the speech at student-run events.

These church events are outside the confines of school and should be equated to similar treatment as if the students were passing out invitations for a celebration which cannot be targeted even though it is religious in nature, because it is not supported nor funded by the school. The policy of the school targeted religious speech specifically for Christians, and  were morally obligated to overturn their ruling which they rightfully did.

The school was wise to permit Margaret and other students to pass out invitations to church events such as Easter or else they would have faced a legal setback in court as students free speech rights are far more protected than state-employed teachers. On top of that was the issue that the school never even had a direct policy in place to ban students from passing out flyers to church-sponsored events which would thus make it illegal to ban them even if the constitution permitted that behavior of discriminating against the church and the students attempt to promote it. The Establishment Clause here is not violated as students are guaranteed rights to freely practice their religion even if that be in public school because they are not actors of the state and their actions towards religious events do not connote a state sponsorship of religion.

This case is almost identical to a lower court ruling K.A v Pocono Mountain School District in which a Pennsylvania court permitted a school girl from passing out invites to occasions of religious nature as the girl passed the Tinker test. The Tinker Test extended many First Amendment privileges to public school students and was used to expand from a previous ruling of West Virginia v Barnette which protected symbolic speech made by students first guaranteed back in 1919 in Stromberg v California. Justice Fortas wrote in Tinker that to ban the speech the school must “base it upon an urgent wish to avoid the controversy which might result from the expression.”

There wasn’t any urgency to ban the invitations or speech of the student because it was a welcoming event that just so happened to be religious. The issue would be greater if the girl refused to include religious minorities on the invite list, but the inclusive nature of the invites means there was no coercive nature to attend simply attempt to spread gospel. Also since the subject of the invites to church events were meant for youth they just so happened to be social gathering in which the main goal was to make new friends in the least coercive nature possible. The nonexistent law that the school had in penalizing Margaret for her invites would have failed the Tinker Test because there is no substantial risk to safety or wellbeing by the passing out of invites without the expectation of full attendance.

Personally, Margaret is well within her rights to try and pass out invites for her church-sponsored events as long as she does it without monetary benefit. Here the church does not hold direct influence over her, and there is no attempt at the church trying to coercive members to join as the events are explicitly focused on children and not on adult worshipping of a higher power. To make matters worse was the school had no written law down preventing religiously minded invites to be passed out in school which could have possibly given them the ability to take this to court but they were wise to prevent this from escalating. There is nothing malicious nor coercive, merely a young child trying to spread the gospel which has been protected by the court as long as it is not coercive or degrading which the school might then have interest in intervening. It is a minor accommodation the school should have permitted as students have rights to exercise their religion as they are not actors of the state and should not be treated as such.