The school encouraged students to create video productions for the school’s program The Saber Roar. “Here, people can dive deep into their culture and learn more about what it means to be their true selves,” school administrators wrote, telling the students that “it’s a really good experience overall and you get to talk to everyone about their culture; religion. … ”

The Saber Roar has aired many other student video productions on a variety of topics, including Weird Holidays, Cultural Misconceptions, Traditions, Foods, Black History Month, and even a video on why Ramadan is so important to Muslim students. The Ramadan video even included a call to prayer and verses from Islamic books.

But when our client, student Mike Roe*, created a video explaining why Christians celebrate Easter, his video was banned — because it was Christian and too religious.

Liberty Counsel’s many recent wins at the U.S. Supreme Court have destroyed similar attempts to eradicate Christian viewpoints.

Schools MAY NOT censor student’s Christian viewpoints, especially when other students are allowed to celebrate and promote their religious beliefs.

Our work includes the recent landmark 9-0 U.S. Supreme Court case, Shurtleff v. City of Boston, in which the Court held that Boston violated the free speech rights of a Christian organization and its founder, Hal Shurtleff, when it refused to let Camp Constitution raise a Christian flag on a flagpole opened to “all applicants” as part of a Constitution Day ceremony in 2017. The City of Boston deemed the Christian flag “religious” and prohibited its display, while numerous other flags with symbols of other religions, or which were deemed “nonreligious,” were permitted.

In the public school context, the Supreme Court has held: “It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”

The Supreme Court has also stated that the “State may not establish a ‘religion of secularism’ in the sense of affirmatively opposing or showing hostility to religion, thus ‘preferring those who believe in no religion over those who do believe.’”

The Supreme Court’s recent decisions in Shurtleff and in the Coach Kennedy case (another case we briefed) do not permit public schools to censor the Christian viewpoints of students.

Don’t let schools bully Christian students! Support our legal fund today and DOUBLE YOUR GIFT through our Challenge Grant.

In both Shurtleff and Kennedy, the Court held that a government entity could not single out Christian religious speech for exclusion in a forum where it permits the free expression of other viewpoints.

But despite all these wins at the highest Court in the land, government agencies, and particularly public schools, keep trying to silence Christians and censor Christian viewpoints.

The Franklin, WI, School District opened a forum for student expression applicable to The Saber Roar. The district permitted other students to produce videos that the students deem of interest to the larger student body, including discussion of culture or religious beliefs and the meanings of religious concepts or practices behind holidays.

NO school district may censor Christian viewpoints of students. Our expert attorneys are battling for Mike Roe and for students like him across the country. But we cannot do this important work alone.

As you know, Liberty Counsel never charges our clients. Few, if any, could afford to take on the endless resources of a government gone mad. Instead, our clients rely on YOU, the faithful Liberty Counsel supporter. Every donation made to our legal fund today will be DOUBLED in impact by a special Challenge Grant. Please, give generously so that not one more Christian is censored by the godless left.

Mat Staver
Founder and Chairman
Liberty Counsel