Imagine No Religion: It's Easy If You're the Ninth Circuit
Yesterday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the decision of a San Diego school district forcing a high school teacher to remove banners from his classroom that "inappropriately" conveyed a "judeo-christian viewpoint."
These incendiary banners included a quotation from the Declaration of Independence ("All men are created equal, they are endowed by their Creator..."), the official motto of the US ("In God We Trust"), and the phrase "One Nation, Under God" -- a phrase inserted by Congress in 1954, and reaffirmed by Congress in 2006. In fact, the teacher had displayed these messages for decades without provoking any complaint - but a new school administrator told him he had to take them down.
Wait -- it gets worse. Other teachers in the same district were displaying posters and banners that promoted liberal or non-Western religious views or outright hostility to religion, including:
- Tibetan prayer flags with images of the Buddha;
- Mahatma Gandhi poster;
- Gandhi’s “7 Social Sins”;
- Dalai Lama
- Malcolm X
- John Lennon and the lyrics to the song “Imagine” (Imagine there’s no Heaven, It’s easy if you try/No hell below us, Above us only sky/…. Nothing to kill or die for, And no religion, too)
But those were all okay. The only one singled out for discipline was the guy with the nerve to quote the Declaration of Independence and our national motto. The teacher won in the district court, where Judge Roger Benitez wrote a boffo decision ripping into the school district, and granting the school district summary judgment, both on free speech and Establishment Clause grounds (because if the State disfavors one religious viewpoint, it necessarily favors the others).
Enter the Ninth Circuit, which held that the teacher's banners are not protected by the free speech clause, and that State action that allows teachers to promote Buddhism, Hinduism, and Atheism, while prohibiting "judeo-christian viewpoints" presents no Establishment Clause problem. No, there's no logic to this. It's yet another step in the judiciary's relentless campaign to destroy the religious underpinnings of our society. No word on whether the teacher will appeal -- he was backed by the excellent Thomas More Law Center, so I hope he will.
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Comments :
May '10
Re: Imagine No Religion: It's Easy If You're the Ninth Circuit
O. M. G.! the G. stands for goodness just in case the 9th Circus is reading this.
Mar '11
Re: Imagine No Religion: It's Easy If You're the Ninth Circuit
They don't call it the Ninth Circus Court for nothing holding the record for overturned decisions.
Aug '11
Re: Imagine No Religion: It's Easy If You're the Ninth Circuit
Legal experts... what would it take to impose term limits on judges? A perfect storm I'm sure, but is such constitutional amendment even possible or is it clearly prohibited in the U.S. Constitution? If not what recourse is there?
Dec '10
Re: Imagine No Religion: It's Easy If You're the Ninth Circuit
"Wait -- it gets worse."
There, I disagree with you. In the context of this post, let's face it, the 9th frequently gets overruled. In the context of society at large and the direction we may be moving, I also anticipate better, not worse. It has been an awful 40 years, since 1970 and things really started going off the rails.
I expect that things are going to get better.
Feb '11
Re: Imagine No Religion: It's Easy If You're the Ninth Circuit
The teacher just needs to do a little editing and he could put his banners back up. Maybe he should try:
- endowed by Buddha
-In Allah we trust
-One nation under Obama.
No one could object to those right?
Jul '10
Re: Imagine No Religion: It's Easy If You're the Ninth Circuit
Adam, I have two questions.
Do you think Pickering is the controlling precedent?
What do you think of the Court's five-part "Pickering based" test?
May '10
Re: Imagine No Religion: It's Easy If You're the Ninth Circuit
Public schools do not exist to educate individuals - they serve to indoctrinate students to serve, and agree with, the currently favored ideology of the state.
How do free citizens go about nullifying the decisions of a too-powerful court?
Jun '10
Re: Imagine No Religion: It's Easy If You're the Ninth Circuit
He can come teach in my NJ town. The Judeo-Christian foundations of our country are celebrated in the schools here both in the classrooms and in our performing arts programs.
Jan '11
Re: Imagine No Religion: It's Easy If You're the Ninth Circuit
I still can't find it anywhere in the Constitution where it says how school children might feel about anything is the litmus test of free expression. Freedom of religion is not the right to be protected from any expression that a ten-year old might not like.
I know plenty of school children who would ... you know, really, like, feel bad ... if you mentioned homework or cleaning up after themselves.
That's why I find the scene of the assistant administrator trying to explain to the veteran teacher about how kids might feel is priceless. "You know, kids have feelings ..."
Jan '11
Re: Imagine No Religion: It's Easy If You're the Ninth Circuit
Another question for our Legal Experts - doesn't the House of Reps (or was it the Senate?) draw up the Federal Judicial Districts?
If we get the majorities I hope to get this next election, I'd like to see the 9th District done away with, and those cases folded into the other, more legally reasoned & responsible districts.
The judiciary in this country needs a major shot across the bow.
Oct '10
Re: Imagine No Religion: It's Easy If You're the Ninth Circuit
Never forget that the rules are made by the guys with the guns. Doubt it? Defy their rules and learn the truth.
Sep '10
Re: Imagine No Religion: It's Easy If You're the Ninth Circuit
So, kids can say "One Nation, Under God" when the do the pledge in morning but they aren't allowed to read it?
And if displaying the Declaration of Independence in a government building is un-constitutional, the the National Archives better be ready to turn their shredder on.
Re: Imagine No Religion: It's Easy If You're the Ninth Circuit
Palaeologus: good questions: 1. Do you think Pickering is the controlling precedent? I doubt whether Pickering should apply to teachers, whether high school or state college. The test would give the state an absolute veto over any idea expressed by a teacher while on the job. 2. What do you think of the Court's five-part "Pickering based" test? Like all multi-factor balancing tests, it's just a way for judges to justify the imposition of their policy preferences. But in this case, it wasn't even properly applied. The banners were not government speech. The whole point of the school district's longstanding policy was to allow teachers a certain freedom to express personal views. The teacher here was a MATH teacher for pity's sake. For the court to say that he was speaking in his official capacity is absurd. But even if you buy that, there's no getting around the selective enforcement -- atheism and Buddha okay but God is not. That destroys any semblance of neutrality.
Re: Imagine No Religion: It's Easy If You're the Ninth Circuit
Think So: it would take an amendment to impose term limits on federal judges. Not likely, I think. CJ: I love your optimism. Hope you're right!
Jun '10
Re: Imagine No Religion: It's Easy If You're the Ninth Circuit
I disagree, it's dangerous to presume our opponents are illogical or irrational. I'm also not convinced they aim to destroy religion.
What they aim for is "diversity" and multiculturalism. They are convinced that majority groups always tend to oppress minorities, so since Christianity is the religion of the majority of Americans, expressions of Christianity are ipso facto evidence of oppression and thus inappropriate. Whereas expressions of any other religion (or atheism) promote a minority group and therefore promote tolerance and diversity.
Jun '10
Re: Imagine No Religion: It's Easy If You're the Ninth Circuit
Precisely. Liberals don't think the schools should be neutral, they think the schools should "celebrate diversity" by promoting all religions except Christianity. They also want children to read works by any authors besides those dreaded dead white males. It's the only way to atone for past sins and ensure the next generation are free from any taint of racism, colonialism, jingoism, etc.
Dec '10
Re: Imagine No Religion: It's Easy If You're the Ninth Circuit
Adam, I am the opposite of an optimist.
As a biologist, I have tried to live and train other people in a way that we can try to save every animal, but humans are difficult.
Nobody ever listens when you tell them that the pendulum is always swinging.
I worry about the backlash that is coming towards environmental pretection and the courts are my worst enemy. Decades have been expended in gaining trust with landowners and industry that are being destroyed, today, and everybody is going to now hate the person that says, "You know, we could save this creek."
I don't have a human agenda and I am not an optimist. I just believe that the pendulum is swinging, hard, and my beloved wildlife are going to get hammered if I don't stay involved.
The critters I care deeply about need me to interact with messy humans.
We are due for a big shift.
May '11
Re: Imagine No Religion: It's Easy If You're the Ninth Circuit
This is why the government has no business being involved in educating children. If we get rid of public schools, we eliminate 70% of public controversy.
Mar '11
Re: Imagine No Religion: It's Easy If You're the Ninth Circuit
Completely unnecessary judicial overreach and abuse of power.
Feb '11
Re: Imagine No Religion: It's Easy If You're the Ninth Circuit
As I have noted before on this forum, one of the things that scares me the most about Obama is the impact his current term is having, and a future term could have, on the judiciary, particularly the Supreme Court. This is a greater existential issue than the economy, but one that is all too often over looked. Given the realities of judiciary tenure, the sometimes malign effect of stare decisis and the even greater malignancy of judicial activism, it may well take generations to undo the damage the progressives have done to the legal system.
Edited on Sep 15, 2011 at 7:20am