A Kansas school blocked a seventh-grader from handing out fliers inviting students to join her in prayer at the school’s flagpole.
Fox News senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano called the school’s ban “so obviously wrong and misguided,” noting that students “theoretically” have the same constitutional rights as anyone else.
“Schools can restrain speech if the speech is disruptive,” Napolitano said. “But when the speech is not disruptive and when it’s especially protected by the Constitution, like speech about religion or speech about non-religion, they cannot interfere with it.”
The school issued a statement to Fox News outlining its policy, which prohibits the distribution of religious material on school property before, during and after the school day.
Napolitano says this is unconstitutional unless the school can show that the “mere distribution” interferes with school activity. Napolitano does not believe it has done so.
Andrew Napolitano called the school’s ban “so obviously wrong and misguided.”
Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian-based legal organization, filed a lawsuit against the school earlier this month.
“Students do not shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate. Non-disruptive private student expression is protected by the First Amendment,” the group wrote in litigation.
The group notes that the school allows posters of rappers and drugs, including one of Lil’ Wayne reading “Good Kush and Alcohol.”
“It’s hard to believe that they would have a regulation that would permit you to distribute literature about dead rappers but not distribute literature about Jesus Christ,” Napolitano said.
The best the school can do, Napolitano says, is admit the mistake and allow the student to distribute the literature.
