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US court rules against public school Bible giveaways
A federal judge ordered a Louisiana public school system to stop allowing in-school Bible giveaways, saying the practice violates the US Constitution's First Amendment on separation of church and state.
- AP
- Published: 00:31 April 24, 2008
New Orleans: A federal judge ordered a Louisiana public school system to stop allowing in-school Bible giveaways, saying the practice violates the US Constitution's First Amendment on separation of church and state.
"Distribution of Bibles is a religious activity without a secular purpose" and amounts to school board promotion of Christianity, US District Judge Carl J. Barbier ruled in a case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana against the Tangipahoa Parish School Board.
As requested by both sides, Barbier made a summary judgment based only on the written briefs - something judges may do only if the law is absolutely clear. Defence attorney Christopher M. Moody said late on Tuesday that the school board decided to appeal the ruling to the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeal.
"We think our chances on appeal are very good," he said. The ACLU filed the lawsuit for an anonymous family whose daughter said she felt pressured into taking a Bible. The girl was called Jane Roe and her father John Roe out of fear of retaliation by schoolmates and neighbours, the ACLU has said.
Jane Roe was a fifth-grader at Loranger Middle School when The Gideons International visited on May 9, 2007. Principal Andre Pellerin notified fifth-grade teachers that the group would be on campus all day, giving away Bibles outside his office. His e-mail said, "Please stress to students that they DO NOT have to get a bible," according to Barbier.
However, the judge wrote, even procedures upheld as neutral for secondary school students might be out of bounds for "an impressionable young elementary-age child". He cited a ruling that upheld a West Virginia county's system of putting both religious and nonreligious material on a secondary school table where school students could walk past it.
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