Bible club lawsuit roils school

Most Downingtown East High School Prayer Club members just wanted to call themselves the Bible Club, use the word Christian, and put religious symbols and quotes from Scripture on their school posters, several students say.

But the three students and two parents who took the Chester County school district to federal court last month said the students also wanted the right to voice their opinions as Christians on any number of topics, including abortion, homosexuality and premarital sex.

And that has triggered a collision between those who want public schools to be havens from society's most contentious debates and those who want the right to express faith-inspired views, even if those views may offend others.

This battle around what limits high schools can put on free speech is playing out around the country. The Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative Christian organization backing the Downingtown suit, has filed more than two dozen similar lawsuits in other states in recent years and has won most of them, spokesman David French said. Downingtown's is the fund's first high school free-speech suit in Pennsylvania.

The group has also taken on similar policies at colleges across the country. In New Jersey, it has written complaint letters to several schools, including one in Ocean County, where it said students were stopped from praying at a middle school flagpole.

In Downingtown, statements in the lawsuit opposing homosexuality have generated much heated debate in the 1,750-student high school.

The plaintiffs - students Stephanie Styer, Steven Styer and Kim Kowalski and the Styers' parents, Randall and Karalee Styer - have all declined to be interviewed.

In the lawsuit, they describe themselves as Christians who believe "that homosexuality is a sin." They also "believe that they have a right to speak out about the sinful nature and harmful effects of homosexuality" and "to speak out on other topics, especially moral issues."

That was a shock for some at the school, where the prayer group, which numbers a few dozen members, was best known for gathering in a circle around the flagpole in front of the school and singing songs before classes. There have been no confrontations between prayer club members and gay students, all agree.

At the school, the uproar over the lawsuit "was nonstop" for the first couple of days, said junior Eric Groff, president of a club known informally as the Gay-Straight Alliance. "Everyone kept coming up and saying, 'What's going on with this thing?' "

James Coll, a prayer club member, said in a posting on the Inquirer Web site that the students only "wanted to express their freedom of religion to be able to promote a Christian prayer group in the school."

He added that the Alliance Defense Fund "had its own goals" for the lawsuit, hence the language about homosexuality.

Randall Wenger, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said they had all agreed to the lawsuit's wording, though their primary goals were to be called the Bible Club and to post signs with religious content inside the school.

Leonard Brown, another lawyer, said the suit mentioned homosexuality as an example of a broader issue: whether the students were free to express their "moral beliefs about what is in the Bible - to question other people's activities, whether it's alcohol use, drugs, or sex outside of marriage."

The suit "was never intended to be an attack specifically aimed at homosexuality," Brown said.

The lawsuit challenges a Downingtown policy limiting student speech that seeks to "establish the supremacy of a particular religious denomination, sect or point of view." Another policy says it's "harassment" to distribute materials "that attempt to diminish the worth of any individual or group." Those policies effectively forbid students from taking a religious stand on anything, Brown said.

District solicitor Guy Donatelli disagreed.

School officials can't just ban any speech they don't like, he said. Citing a seminal 1969 U.S. Supreme Court decision that said students could wear armbands to protest the Vietnam War, he said the district can limit student speech only if "there could be imminent, substantial disruption of the educational process."

In general, "when students go into school, there should be a little bubble of protection around them, so they can learn," Donatelli added. "And whatever speech gets in the way of that, it should be limited."

Downingtown Superintendent Levi Wingard said the district must ensure that schools operate with "an atmosphere of respect." He added: "If someone is attacking a student, we will address it immediately."

The Pennsylvania School Boards Association also supports limits on student speech. "If you have one child who is the target of emotional torture, that's a substantial disruption of the educational process," said Stuart Knade, the group's chief counsel.

That perspective resonates with some students and parents.

Groff, the Gay-Straight Alliance president, said he believed "everyone should be able to voice their opinion unless it is a personal thing that makes someone uncomfortable to go to school." When he was younger and unsure of his sexual identity, he added, "if I had seen a sign... on a wall saying homosexuality is a sin, I would have gone ballistic - I don't know what I would have done."

Jess Clark, a Downingtown East sophomore, said she too had problems with using religion in school to criticize others. "Christianity is not about being superior to others or bashing others' lifestyle," she wrote in an e-mail.

Her father, Bob Clark, said in an interview: "It's entirely proper to say, 'We're the Bible Club,' and a belief in the Bible and Christianity is fine. But when all of a sudden you... start to talk about another group of students - I don't think that's a very good idea at all."

David Kairys, a Temple University law professor and a constitutional scholar, said the general trend from the courts had been "toward giving school administrations more power and giving students very little right to free speech."

But, he added, "the law is far from settled on all this".

Two court cases illustrate different views.

A decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit last month upheld a school's ban on a student T-shirt. On one side the shirt said, "Be ashamed, our school embraced what God has condemned," and on the other, "Homosexuality is shameful."

The court said, "Public school students who may be injured by verbal assaults on the basis of a core identifying characteristic such as race, religion or sexual orientation have a right to be free from such attacks while on school campuses."

In another case, a 2001 decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, written by Judge Samuel Alito, now a Supreme Court justice, struck down a Pennsylvania district policy that limited student speech.

Students said they feared punishment under a State College school district policy if they spoke about their religious beliefs, including their view of homosexuality as a sin, and distributed religious literature.

The court sided with the students, saying that "the mere desire to avoid 'discomfort' or 'unpleasantness' is not enough to justify restricting student speech."

One issue in Downingtown has been resolved, verbally at least.

Both sides have agreed that the students can call their group the Bible Club and can use religious language and symbols on posters. A revision of the student code - in progress before the lawsuit - will make that clear, Donatelli said.

Though that's a positive step, there's no agreement yet on students' right to speak out on controversial issues, Brown said.

"Right now the current student policies are still in place; there is only a gentlemen's agreement to change them," Brown said. "Nothing has been finalized."