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Attorney: School Could Face Suit for Censoring Christian Valedictory Speech

by Jim Brown
June 21, 2006

(AgapePress) - - A constitutional attorney is denouncing a Las Vegas school district for pulling the plug on a Christian student's commencement speech because it referred to her faith in Jesus Christ. At a recent graduation ceremony, Clark County School District (CCSD) officials cut the microphone on Foothill High School valedictorian Brittany McComb after she began reading a speech that contained Bible verses and references to God.

The district officials claim McComb's speech amounted to religious proselytizing and could have been perceived as school-sponsored, thus making it a violation of the so-called separation of church and state. But Mat Staver, founder and chairman of the Florida-based pro-family legal organization Liberty Counsel, says the high school valedictorian has every right to take the school district to court over the incident.

[Photo compliments of Liberty Counsel]
Mat Staver   
"I think this is one of the most outrageous examples of censorship at graduation that I've seen," Staver contends. "For school officials to literally be standing by the switch at the mixing board and cut the microphone on a student, simply because that student mentions God or Jesus, is just unbelievable."

With high school behind her, McComb plans to study journalism at Biola University, a Christian college in Southern California. But during her four years at Foothill, she says, "they taught me logic and they taught me freedom of speech." However, when the school's 2006 valedictorian tried to apply these lessons in her graduation address, the graduating senior with the 4.7 GPA ran into a problem.

In vetting McComb's speech, school officials stripped it of biblical references and approved an edited version, cutting six mentions of God or Christ and omitting two biblical references. At the graduation exercises, however, the teen commencement speaker felt compelled to deviate from the edited version. "God's the biggest part of my life," she says. "Just like other valedictorians thank their parents, I wanted to thank my Lord and Savior."

For the Foothill High School graduate, it all boiled down to her faith and her fundamental First Amendment right to free speech. For those reasons , she asserts, she chose in this instance to rebel against authority for the first time in her life. And, according to an Associated Press report, a sympathetic crowd of nearly 400 graduates and their families booed angrily at the school officials for several minutes after they cut McComb's microphone.

An American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Nevada official who read the unedited version of the young woman's speech told the Las Vegas Review-Journal newspaper the school district did the right thing in cutting the valedictory address short. But Staver disagrees that the district's action was warranted and comments, "In my opinion it's reprehensible, and I also believe it's unconstitutional."

The ACLU spokesperson quoted in the Review-Journal made the argument that graduation speakers like McComb are given a school-sponsored forum and therefore their speech is school-sponsored speech. But Liberty Counsel's chairman insists that student commencement speakers' personal remarks and expressions are free speech under the U.S. Constitution.

"Clearly, the law protects students who are in the graduation podium, on the platform, because they are there for some neutral reason -- in this case, being the valedictorian," Staver says. "That student has the right to be able to give a message of his or her own choice regarding the viewpoint of the particular message that's being delivered."

While the attorney regards the silencing of McComb's speech at the Foothill High School commencement as one of the most egregious acts of graduation censorship he has seen, he notes that it is one among many such incidents that happen to speakers of faith every year -- a problem that has to be stopped. "Schools should not, must not, and must stop censoring these kinds of religious viewpoints simply because they are Christian in nature," he says.

Even now, Staver points out, his organization is involved in a similar case. Liberty Counsel is currently representing a Colorado high school graduate whose diploma was withheld after she shared her faith in Jesus Christ during a commencement speech.

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Well, thats like me posting the day before, "God had bigger plans,’ valedictorian says after Nev. high school cuts off her speech" but I was being nice, and not saying anything. ;D  But what does it matter, as long as the Word gets out.  Also this is from C.U..................  ;D

So ..............................................................

Civics 101: Silence a Student's Speech, Face a Potential Lawsuit
Plug-Pulling High School Likely to Be Sued Next Week for Silencing Christian Student



A civil liberties group says it plans to sue the Nevada high school that unplugged the microphone of a valedictorian because her commencement speech mentioned her faith in Jesus Christ.

The Rutherford Institute says it plans to file a lawsuit against Foothill High School in Henderson as early as next week over its censorship of senior Brittany McComb. Officials with the Clark County School District pulled the plug on McComb after she began reading a graduation speech that contained Bible verses and a reference to Jesus Christ.

Rutherford Institute president John Whitehead says the school engaged in religious viewpoint discrimination, something the Supreme Court has said is unconstitutional -- and something he believes some courts would view as "abhorrent" in this particular case.

"It's a little different than some of the cases where the courts have ruled that schools can control basically what students say," Whitehead explains. "Here they actually pulled the plug on her -- and I don't know if most people know about the news accounts, but there were like 400 people there [who] started booing and hissing when they cut off the mike on this girl."

Whitehead says the school was not endorsing religion or violating the so-called separation of church and state, but rather was doing everything it could to say it wanted nothing to do with what McComb was saying. McComb had deviated from a school-approved and edited version of her original address. But the Rutherford attorney says the case is not an Establishment Clause issue, but rather a First Amendment free-speech issue.

"If the schools are going to edit speeches ... then the principal or whoever [did the editing] should get up and give the speech, because it really isn't the kid that's giving the speech; it's the school speaking through a student," the attorney says.

"But it's not the fact that she agreed [to deliver the edited version of the speech]. The question is, does she have free speech? Can she give a speech and, at the end, say 'by the way, here's the most important thing in my life' -- before they pull the plug on her?"

McComb, he says, "worked hard to earn the right to address her classmates as valedictorian" and "has a constitutional right -- like other students -- to freely speak about the factors that contributed to her success, whether they be a supportive family, friends, or her faith in Jesus Christ." And school officials, by pulling the plug on the school's top graduate, have demonstrated "yet another example of a politically correct culture silencing Christians in order not to offend those of other beliefs," Whitehead adds.

Ironically, the school district may have violated its own guidelines by its actions. The Rutherford Institute notes that the official free-speech policy of the Clark County School Board states: "Where students or other private graduation speakers are selected on the basis of genuinely neutral, evenhanded criteria and retain primary control over the content of their expression...that expression is not attributable to the school and, therefore, may not be restricted because of its religious (or anti-religious) content."

According to Whitehead, school officials edited out almost half of McComb's original version. He says it is still unclear whether the American Civil Liberties Union had a role in editing the speech or advised the school board's lawyer to remove religious references, but he says regardless, the ACLU acted as a "government agent of suppression."

AMEN!!

She was only expressing her First Amendment right to free speech.  ;D