Imagine your daughter being pulled out of math class by a school official and told she must leave her faith at the door – while the very same school encourages other students to walk out for anti-ICE protests.
That’s not hypothetical. That’s exactly what happened to our client at a middle school in Washington state – in a district with a troubling pattern of violating the Constitution.
And we know this district well – because the ACLJ has already held it accountable once before.
Years ago, when our client was just a second grader in this same district, school officials searched her backpack every morning, treating Christian materials like contraband. Simply sharing her faith was enough to trigger daily inspections.
We stepped in. We took action. And we forced the district to back down.
After we sent a demand letter, the school district entered into a formal written agreement – explicitly affirming our client’s constitutional right to share her faith.
However, during a recent math class, the vice principal entered the room, pulled our client aside, and told her she was not allowed to distribute Christian Gospel tracts – even to willing classmates.
Our client responded with a question that cuts to the heart of this issue: Why are other students allowed to express their views – but she is not?
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The vice principal’s answer was stunning in its candor, telling our client directly that students may share opinions, but not religious beliefs.
We’ve seen this thousands of times at the ACLJ, yet it never fails to shock. A public school official – in the United States of America – told a child that her faith is a category of speech that the school can simply exclude. This is textbook viewpoint discrimination, and it is flat-out unconstitutional.
But it gets worse. In the very same conversation, the vice principal pointed to the school’s practice of allowing students to leave campus during school hours to participate in anti-ICE protests as an example of perfectly acceptable expression. Political protest – permitted. Quietly sharing a Gospel tract with a classmate who asked for one – forbidden. The double standard could not be more explicit – or more illegal.
The First Amendment does not allow public school officials to pick and choose which viewpoints deserve protection. The Supreme Court has made this unmistakably clear: Students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”
Viewpoint discrimination – treating speech less favorably because of the perspective it expresses – is among the most serious constitutional violations a government actor can commit. And this school has now committed it twice against the same child.
The ACLJ sent a formal demand letter to the school superintendent. We are requiring the district to respond in writing and that response must include immediate, unequivocal written assurances on two points: First, that our client will be permitted to share her faith and distribute tracts to willing classmates during non-instructional time without any further interference from school officials; and second, that she will be allowed to form and operate a Christian student club on the exact same terms and conditions that apply to every other non-curriculum-related student group on campus.
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