Teacher sues after school bans inspirational quotes

Like most conservatives, I generally feel our current culture is far too litigious. Many in today’s society will immediately react to any disappointment or difficulty by filing a lawsuit instead of merely accepting that, sometimes, things just happen.
One New York public school teacher, in my estimation, does not fall into that category.
She recently filed a suit in response to a letter she received from the school’s superintendent months earlier instructing her to remove a litany of inspirational quotes from her class.
The self-described Christian reported getting an eight-page letter detailing which materials she must take down to avoid offending anyone.
A Ronald Reagan quote in which he states, “If we ever forget that we are One Nation Under God, then we will be a Nation gone under,” is indicative of the speech deemed unacceptable by the school.
Robert Muise of the American Freedom Law Center is the teacher’s attorney and has harsh words for those limiting his client’s free expression.
He said the school is treating the existence of affirmative posters in the classroom “like it’s some sort of pornography,” adding administrators went too far in stripping the teacher’s room of any mention of faith.
Officials “literally went through her classroom with a fine-tooth comb and removed anything that had anything to do with Christianity,” Muise said. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”
In addition to quotes on her desk and classroom walls, administrators also forced the teacher to remove a box available for students with prayer requests. The school’s Bible club would collect the requests and include them in prayers during meetings.
The superintendent admonished the teacher, saying, “Under no circumstances should you participate in the club’s meetings or activities.”
All this amounts to a breach of her liberty, she contends.
“I believe that my First Amendment rights were violated,” she stated, adding she feels called to “fight to protect the rights that people have died to give me.”
Muise said the students’ rights were also abridged.
“This was just students leading prayers and they removed the prayer box from the classroom,” he said. “That’s a violation of their rights.”
He called the incident “an example of what we are seeing across the country.”
Our founders created an amendment specifically to protect an individual’s right to express his or her faith. In just the last few generations, that uniquely American freedom has been twisted and used to silence any such expressions in the utopian task of absolute inclusion.
The left seems to view any vestige of Christianity – no matter how slight – as an outright endorsement of the faith. Meanwhile, students are subjected to lessons detailing just about any other religion in the name of multiculturalism.
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B. Christopher Agee

B. Christopher Agee is an award-winning journalist and conservative columnist. He established The Informed Conservative and late 2011 and currently reaches an audience of millions each month through publication on several major websites. He lives in the Fort Worth, Texas, area with his wife.

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