(no subject) Clergy at career days

[Richard James]

Interesting responses, thanks. 

In this case, the situation was much more of a forum, with an open invitation 
sent home with all students asking for parent volunteers willing to come in and 
talk about their careers. In fact, I was responding to a second appeal for 
speakers sent out from the class which was lamenting the limited participation 
from parents. I’m interested to know in this case what informs the 
differentiation between invited guests and forum. However, Doug Laycock’s point 
is applicable, since the presentations were going to be made to the class in 
general by individual presenters.

It seems reasonable enough that the teacher’s right to control guests is not 
subject to much challenge, but I had emphasized to the volunteer and the 
teacher that the minister wasn’t going to engage in any proselytizing, but was 
going to discuss the functional aspects of her job. I suppose that this might 
be a legitimate concern for a teacher due to the awkwardness and controversy 
that having a holy roller come in and preach might engender, but I didn’t 
receive any suggestion that this had been something that had any precedent. 
Finally, I suppose, is there a question of what free speech rights were 
violated at all, since the speech in question is some steps removed from the 
subject of the rights? The case in Peck is clearer in this sense because the 
school restricted the direct speech of a student because of religious content, 
despite the fact that the speech was expressed within the school’s pedagogic 
purpose. Here, the speech may not be speech and is connected to the pedagogical 
purpose more tenuously.

Of course, as a non-lawyer, I think that what the school has done is dumb, 
mostly.

 

Richard James
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(no subject)

[Richard James]

In response to the March 26 posting below (although it’s not really a response, 
because I was the ‘correspondent’) it might also be the case that Church of 
Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. City of Hialeah 508 U.S. 520, 530 (1993) has more 
bearing on the issue, as the decision holds that: "The first amendment forbids 
an official purpose to disapprove of...religion in general." My goal is to try 
to provide a constructive response to the school that will enable them to stay 
out of hot water in the future by mitigating this kind of knee-jerk response to 
the issue at hand.
 
>Can a school restrict participation in school->sponsored "career day"type 
>events due to concerns >about "chuch/state separation"? Our daughter had 
>intended >to invite her grandmother, a minister, to a firstgrade >career day 
>to which the school had issued a broad >invitation. Today I was told by the 
>principal that the >attendance of a minister would be a violation of 
>>separation. I think that schools are understandable hyper->cautious about 
>this issue, but do you think that Peck v. >Baldwinsville has any bearing on 
>this? It might be thought >that participation by student's invitees is an 
>aspect of >free speech and that therefore the school is engaged >in 'viewpoint 
>discrimination' of the
>kind identified in Peck.
  

Richard James
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