As incomprehensible to average Americans as it may seem, three stories about government school students facing disciplinary actions for expressing their Christian faith were featured in Christian media publications over the past few months:

• A six-year-old girl loves Jesus and is concerned about her second grade classmates’ eternities. She shares her newfound faith and it scares her friends. The Des Moines Washington teacher hears concerns from the classmates’ parents, and the little one finds her book bag searched everyday when she enters the schoolyard.

• A 14 year old student in Florida is ridiculed for reading his Bible at school. Not only did classmates reportedly threaten the boy on account of his faith, the high school freshman’s science teacher publicly questioned him and insinuated he was “ignorant” for believing in God and the Bible.

• Last year, yet another Florida high school student was reprimanded by her drama teacher for writing a monologue that referenced her faith in Jesus. The student was told to rewrite the assignment with no reference to religion.

Those are only three instances made public by legal groups representing the students who, their lawyers say, have had their First Amendment rights restricted in government schools.

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

While the First Amendment focuses on the U.S. Congress and what they cannot do, it asserts that public policies restricting religious practice or expression at lower levels are not acceptable, either.

The 14-year-old Florida student whose teacher ridiculed him for his faith experienced something no American should ever have to experience, his attorney Harmeet K. Dhillon said in a statement.

“It’s bad enough that the school has done nothing to stop the bullying from his peers, but have gone as far as joining in on targeting [the student] for simply practicing his faith. This blatant violation of his First Amendment rights is another example of how extreme so many in our education system have become,” Dhillon said, and why her law firm took on his case.

The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), which took on the 14-year-old drama student’s case, described a similar legal scenario.

“This is what ‘wokeness’ has come to—shaming middle school students for expressing their joy in their personal relationship with Jesus Christ because it is considered ‘offensive,’” Christina Compagnone (Stierhoff) of the ACLJ wrote in April 2021. “This was a clear violation of this student’s First Amendment rights and an affront to the religious liberties rooted deeply in the history and culture of the United States.”

The U.S. Supreme Court dealt with the First Amendment rights of students five decades ago, in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503 (1969). In their ruling favoring the plaintiffs, the highest court in the land wrote:

In our system, state-operated schools may not be enclaves of totalitarianism. School officials do not possess absolute authority over their students. Students in school, as well as out of school, are “persons” under our Constitution. They are possessed of fundamental rights which the State must respect, just as they themselves must respect their obligations to the State. In our system, students may not be regarded as closed-circuit recipients of only that which the State chooses to communicate. They may not be confined to the expression of those sentiments that are officially approved. In the absence of a specific showing of constitutionally valid reasons to regulate their speech, students are entitled to freedom of expression of their views.

And while that’s a strong statement in favor of students’ rights to express their opinions, the question is whether the Court would hold a similar position in 2022, or would the Court decide that maintaining peace in a politically- and religiously-divided setting is the “greater good?”

A growing number of Christian parents are choosing home schools and private Christian schools rather than dealing with antagonistic settings and curriculum offered in state-operated schools.

As more and more cases like those hit Christian media headlines and eventually make it to dominant media, the more intense the issue will become and all the more urgent for American freedom-loving parents to defend future generations from anti-Christian sentiments within government schools.

Illinois Family Institute offers an array of resources on their website at illinoisfamily.org to help parents make crucial decisions about their children’s education.

Written by James M. Odom, Esq.
Senior Policy Analyst, The Illinois Family Institute

Our founders were so sophisticated in their understanding of religion and civil government, that they secured this critical inalienable right given by the Creator to all mankind, as the very first freedom to be protected by the U.S. Government.

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.
It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
~John Adams, 2^nd President of the U.S.A.

This is why the Illinois Family Institute has joined a friend of the court (“amicus”) brief supporting Catholic Social Services in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, 922 F.3d 140 (3d Cir. 2019), just argued before the Supreme Court of the United States.

The City of Philadelphia wants same sex relationships to be universally accepted, regardless of religious belief, and has therefore prohibited foster children from being placed with a Catholic organization that has been serving children in this way for 223 years, because their religious practice prevents them from placing children with same-sex couples.  Though, incidentally the organization never actually refused a same-sex placement. They refer them elsewhere.

At the federal level, the courts generally enforce the First Amendment by requiring 1) a compelling government interest, and 2) the least restrictive means narrowly tailored to actually achieve that interest before allowing a government to infringe Constitutional rights. This is referred to as the strict scrutiny test.

While it has generally been accepted since the ratification of the 14^th Amendment that the federal government would also defend rights enumerated in the U.S. Constitution against the actions of State and local governments, the U.S. Supreme Court in Employment Division v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990), reduced this protection by ruling that government actions not targeted specifically against religion, or those called “generally applicable,” do not prohibit the free exercise of religion.

This has enabled state and local governments to tailor laws to limit the free exercise of religion by simply outlawing religious practices that they dislike, for everyone, rather than just those who are acting based upon their faith. This has resulted in numerous states passing “Religious Freedom Restoration” laws to reinstate the previous level of judicial scrutiny.

Such limitation of religious liberty is exactly what happened in Fulton.

This is also why Illinois churches’ federal lawsuits against being forced to close during the COVID-19 pandemic fell on deaf ears in the federal courts.

With the new Court make-up (already relevant, as it had refused to even hear similar cases prior to the appointment of Justice Amy Coney Barrett), there is a possibility of overturning Employment Division, and reinstating a test which would prevent such government prohibitions of exercising religious faith.

What this case is really all about, is giving government the ability to silence the Church, and thereby God, and the Word of God on issues of right and wrong.

The political left desires to replace the current United States Republican form of government with the political philosophies of Karl Marx in the Communist Manifesto (referred to more gently as “socialism” by Democrat politicians such as Bernie Sanders).  Removing the Church’s ability to influence the culture’s understanding of right and wrong is a key element needed to effectively marginalize true religion and make it irrelevant.

This is why Democrats appoint activist judges who will re-write the Constitution to suit their contemporary ideology, and why they now desire to continue that practice by adding more judges to the High Court.

Pray with us that our Creator who holds this Court and this Country in His mighty hand, will guide the Court to protect true religion and His Church, the indispensable foundation of this great Nation!

PLEASE PRAY: Pray for God’s mercy on our nation as we await the results of President Trump’s legal challenges to election results. In 2000, it took 37 days to figure out the “hanging chad” dilemma. We must be patient. In the meantime, please pray that any and all corruption would be exposed. 

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