Parents Win Suit to Control Pupils’ Reading

A federal judge ruled Friday that a rural eastern Tennessee school district violated the constitutional rights of seven fundamentalist Christian families by forcing their children to read textbooks with selections from works offensive to their religious beliefs--among them, Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” “The Diary of Anne Frank” and Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales.

But, instead of acceding to the families’ demand that the Hawkins County school district be required to provide an alternative curriculum with religiously acceptable texts, U.S. District Judge Thomas Hull ordered the district to allow the students to skip the required reading program and study reading at home with their parents after school.

Eight-Day Trial

Hull said that “considerable evidence” during the eight-day non-jury trial in July indicated that no single reading series on the state-approved list would be acceptable to the families without modifications and that the home-schooling option would be a “reasonable alternative.”

He stressed that the case was a narrow one and that the parents were not seeking to have the textbooks “banned from the classroom” or to “expunge the theory of evolution from the public school curriculum.”

“Despite considerable fanfare in the press billing this action as ‘Scopes II,’ it bears little relation to the famous ‘monkey trial’ of 1925,” Hull said in his 27-page decision. “These plaintiffs simply claim that they should not be forced to chose between reading books that offend their religious beliefs and forgoing a free public education.”

Michael P. Farris, an attorney for the Washington-based conservative group Concerned Women for America who argued the case for the families, hailed the decision as a victory for “religious tolerance.”

“Those who wanted to throw children out of school because of their religion have been decisively defeated,” he said at a news conference in Washington.

Appeal Planned

But Timothy Dyk, a Washington attorney and chief counsel for the defendants, said that he will appeal the ruling immediately.

“We intend to take this case as far as is necessary to get this decision reversed,” he said at a separate news conference in the nation’s capital.

His legal services were paid for by People for the America Way, a liberal lobby founded by television producer Norman Lear.

Anthony Podesta, president of People for the America Way, said the decision is a “recipe for disaster for the public schools.”

“The schoolhouse door will have to be coverted into a revolving door as different sects participate in the public school curriculum in differing degrees,” he said.

‘Anti-Christian’ Books

In their complaint, the families--all from the Tennessee Bible Belt town of Church Hill near the Virginia border--contended that the texts were “anti-Christian and anti-American” and that the schools had no constitutional right to indoctrinate students in ways contrary to their religious beliefs.

Among the objectionable selections were “Macbeth,” for its presentations of witchcraft and magic, Anne Frank’s diary, because it suggests that all religions are equal, and Andersen’s fairy tales, for their references to fortunetelling and other occult or supernatural themes.

The families contended also that additional material in the reading series, which is published by Holt Rinehart & Winston for the first through eighth grades and widely used in U.S. classrooms, promoted evolution, feminism, one-world government, rebellion against authority and other concepts they deemed contrary to their religious beliefs.

John Workman, spokesman for the publishing company, said in a telephone interview Friday that the decision would not change the way the reading series is written because “we don’t write our textbooks for the right or the left.”

In his decision, Hull said: “The state of Tennessee and the Hawkins County Board of Education have a legitimate, compelling and overriding interest in the education of public school students; but this interest does not necessitate uniform use of the Holt series and can be achieved by less restrictive means.”

To Study at Home

He said that a “reasonable alternative” would be to allow the students to opt out of reading classes. “As the court envisions the opt-out program,” he added, “each of the student-plaintiffs would withdraw to a study hall or to the library during his or her regular reading period at school and would study reading with a parent later at home.”

However, the students would still have to take standardized achievement tests used by the state, he said.

The home-schooling option, which is permissible under Tennessee law, does not run contrary to the clause of the First Amendment regarding establishment of religion because it does not involve “state sponsorship, financial support nor active involvement of the sovereign (state) in religious activity,” he held.

The judge rejected arguments by the school board that providing an alternative reading curriculum would be costly and cumbersome. On the other hand, he said, finding acceptable textbooks for use in such a program would be difficult.

“The defendants are rightly concerned that any accommodation of the plaintiffs in the schools would have the effect of advancing a particular religion and would involve an excessive entanglement between the state and religion,” he said.

Case Once Dismissed

The families’ legal battle began in 1983, but Hull originally dismissed the case. However, the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals decided that a question remained as to whether alternative texts should be used and ordered a new trial.

Some of the families had sued for out-of-pocket expenses incurred by sending their children to private Christian academies. In addition, the plaintiffs seek damages for violation of their civil rights. Hull said he will convene a jury to decide damages in the case and set a tentative trial date of Dec. 15.

David Treadwell reported from Greeneville and Mark Landler from Washington.