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California free-speech case returns to trial court

Three years ago, a public high school student was penalized for wearing to school a T-shirt objecting to homosexuality on religious grounds. That student's attorney now says the U.S. Supreme Court "did the right thing" by vacating the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal's decision supporting a district court ruling which approved the school's right to censor his speech.



Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) attorney Tim Chandler describes the Ninth Circuit's decision in Chase Harper v. Poway Unified School District as the most "speech-restrictive" decision that has ever been issued by a court, and one that is not in line with established precedent that protects students' rights to share their faith on campus.

The lawsuit was filed three years ago after Harper was made to sit in the school office for the day after wearing a T-shirt with a viewpoint opposing homosexual behavior on the "Day of Silence," a yearly event sponsored by the school's Gay Straight Alliance.

"I think what you've seen here is an example of a court being more concerned with being politically correct than constitutionally correct," says Chandler. "And the Ninth Circuit, in particular, made a number of stretches to try to say that this speech was particularly harmful without any real evidence of that."

The ADF attorney says the result was Christian students being treated as second-class citizens and being told that they cannot share their faith on campus. The attorney says Harper's case has now been brought back to the trial court, to be reheard.