Eugene, do you think the University of Virginia under Rosenberger could have required its students to 1. accept copies of all the periodicals produced by student organizations, and 2. bring copies of those periodicals home to their parents -- or deliver them to anyone else for that matter? Why should students be required to facilitate the distribution of any private organization's political or religious message? Could the state condition my use of a public park on my agreement to accept any leaflets handed to my by leaflet distributors and to bring them home to my wife.
Alan Brownstein UC Davis
At 04:29 PM 6/30/2004 -0700, you wrote:
I'm puzzled by Judge Michael's "coercion" argument: "The Establishment Clause forbids a state from coercing 'anyone to support or participate in religion or its exercise.' If the Montgomery County Public Schools (the School System) give Child Evangelism Fellowship of Maryland, Inc. (CEF) access to the School System's take-home flyer forum, elementary students will be required to distribute CEF's religious flyers to their parents. The students, in other words, will be coerced to participate in a religious activity in violation of the Establishment Clause."
The students wouldn't be asked to say anything religious, or endorse religion -- they'd be asked to deliver a piece of paper, something no different than a postman would do when told to deliver religious materials. If the postman can be required to deliver religious materials alongside everyone else without this being unconstitutional coercion -- presumably because he's being required to engage in a secular task, the delivery of mail, even though the mail happens to be religious -- then why would the child be any different? (See the majority, note 8.)
Nor does it matter, I think, that these are impressionable elementary school students. Why would even a 9-year-old, when told to bring a flyer to his parents, wrongly but reasonably feel this to be a religious exercise?
Eugene
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