Court Rejects Student Plea on Jesus as Topic

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected the claim of a ninth-grade student who said she had a free-speech right to choose the life of Jesus Christ as a topic for a class paper.

The justices, without comment, refused to hear an appeal filed on behalf of a Tennessee girl whose teacher gave her a zero after she persisted in writing about Jesus.

The case of Brittney K. Settle of Dickson, Tenn., has been cited recently by Christian legal activists as an example of how public school officials continue to exclude any mention of religious belief, even when students are given freedom to discuss an array of topics.

Two weeks ago, House Republicans proposed to amend the Constitution to forbid what they say is official bias against religion. Their amendment would make it unconstitutional for any public agency or official to “discriminate against any private person or group on account of religious expression [or] belief.”

In June, the Supreme Court said that public officials must be “neutral” toward religion. They may neither favor religion nor discriminate against it.

In a 5-4 ruling, the court said that University of Virginia officials erred when they denied funding to a student magazine simply because it espoused a Christian perspective.

But the facts in the Tennessee schoolgirl’s case were not quite as clear, which probably explains why the high court did not intervene.

In March, 1991, teacher Dana Ramsey assigned her ninth-graders to write a research paper, using at least four sources.

The students were told to submit their topic for approval. When Brittney Settle said she wanted to write about Jesus, the teacher said no.

Brittney’s father complained to school officials and then sued for damages after his daughter received a grade of zero for her paper.

The teacher offered several reasons for rejecting the paper. She wanted students to dispassionately research a new topic, she said, not to dwell on something on which they already had strong, personal opinions.

“We don’t deal with personal religious beliefs. It’s just not an appropriate thing to do in public school,” the teacher added.

A federal judge ruled in favor of the school, and the U.S. court of appeals in Cincinnati agreed. Teachers have “broad leeway” to control the curriculum and to decide what is appropriate in class, the lower courts said.

Lawyers active in the Christian legal movement urged the high court to hear the case of Settle vs. Dickson County School Board, 95-507, and to rule that public school officials may “not censor or punish individual student expression . . . on the basis of its particular religious viewpoint.” They noted that other students were permitted to write about topics such as reincarnation, witchcraft and the occult.

“It’s clear the real reason [for rejecting the girl’s paper] was its religious content. And this is not an isolated incident,” said Gregory S. Baylor, an attorney for the Christian Legal Society of Annandale, Va.

University of Chicago law professor Michael McConnell, who helped draft the proposed constitutional amendment, said he has “little doubt that the case would have come out the other way if a racist teacher had forbidden a paper on Martin Luther King Jr.”

In July, President Clinton sounded off in support of religious expression in public school. “The First Amendment does not convert our schools into religion-free zones,” he said. “Students should feel free to express their religion and their beliefs in homework [and] during class presentations, as long as it is relevant to the assignment.”

But Elliot Mincberg, legal director of People for the American Way, applauded the court’s action. “This was supposed to be a research paper, not an opinion paper. If the courts are going to second-guess a teacher’s decision in a case like this, it will mean just the kind of meddling in local affairs that conservatives always say they oppose.”

Still, the issue of free speech and religious expression will likely gain even more attention in the coming year.

The House has two proposed constitutional religious amendments before it. The version sponsored by Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) bans government bias against religion. A second proposal, sponsored by Rep. Ernest Istook Jr. (R-Okla.), goes further, allowing group prayers written by students or by local school boards.

“We’re going to have a real debate on this,” said a House committee aide, with hearings in December and the possibility of votes early next year.