Hoystory

District Court Judge John A. Houston — a Bush 43 appointee — ruled yesterday that it’s perfectly OK to silence non-threatening religious speech on school campuses if the speech says that someone is doing wrong.

Houston then relied on an earlier appeals court decision in the case to find that the school’s actions didn’t infringe on students’ rights of free speech, free exercise of religion, nor were they hostile to a particular religious viewpoint.

He cited that decision, which found that schools have a responsibility to stop harassment on the basis of sexual orientation because it “adversely affects the rights of public high school students.”

For those of you unfamiliar with the case, the “harassment” was a statement written on masking tape on Tyler Chase Harper’s T-shirt that read: “I Will Not Accept What God Has Condemned” on the front and “Homosexuality Is Shameful, Romans 1:27” on the back.

The district’s lawyer’s response is laughable.

For Poway Unified School District lawyer Jack Sleeth, the case isn’t about freedom of speech, but rather about keeping students free from attacks on their race, religion or sexual orientation.

“We can stop that in the school,” he said. “We should stop that in the school.”

How exactly did the district “protect” Harper from attacks on his religion by pulling him out of class for trying to express his religious beliefs?

For those of you interested in a more thoughtful ruling on the case, you should check out the link to Appeals Court Judge Alex Kozinski’s dissent in an earlier ruling in this case in this post.

Harper’s attorneys have vowed to appeal, and the Supreme Court should not let this stand. Hopefully the new arrivals of justices Alito and Roberts will un-muddy some of the Court’s recent establishment clause and free speech jurisprudence.