On The Front Lines
U.S. District Court Grants Victory to Rutherford Institute, Orders School Officials to Restore Cross-Engraved Bricks to Walkway
ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- In a recent ruling, Judge James C. Cacheris of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia has held that Potomac Falls High School wrongly discriminated against several students and their parents when they removed cross-engraved bricks, purchased by the families, from a school walkway. "The Court holds that having created a limited public forum, the school engaged in impermissible viewpoint discrimination against expression with a religious viewpoint." The ruling, which comes in response to a lawsuit filed by attorneys for The Rutherford Institute, requires school officials to immediately return the bricks to their former places in the "Walkway of Fame.""Those who wrote the First Amendment to our Constitution intended it to provide freedom of religion, not freedom from religion," stated John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute. "We are pleased that the U.S. District Court has sent a message to school officials that religious discrimination will not be tolerated."
For several years, Parents Associated with the School (PAWS), a parent association at Potomac Falls High School in Potomac Falls, Va., has conducted a "Walkway of Fame" fundraising campaign to help student clubs and organizations raise funds for school fieldtrips. The campaign involves the sale of engraved bricks, which can be personalized with a limited amount of text and a small symbol selected from a list of icons, including the image of a cross. The bricks are then placed in a "Walkway of Fame" around the school's flagpole. In response to complaints by the parents of one student, school officials removed only the bricks that bore the cross symbol and replaced them with blank placeholders, allegedly in an attempt to avoid offending anyone. Several of the bricks that were removed had been in place for approximately a year. Charging that the school violated the First Amendment rights of the parents who purchased the bricks, Rutherford Institute attorneys filed suit in U.S. District Court in 2003, asking the court to order school officials to restore the purchased and engraved bricks bearing the cross to their rightful places around the flagpole.
The Rutherford Institute is an international, nonprofit civil liberties organization committed to defending constitutional and human rights.
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