Via Religion Clause, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that a principal's restriction of a student's distribution of religious material was a violation of the students' First Amendment rights.
A reasonable person would not have believed that Stephanie Vesher’s act of handing pencils to a select few recipients after school bore the imprimatur of the school. Indeed, the complaint alleges that Stephanie distributed her pencils only to a “small group of her classmates,” and, even then, she distributed them only to students who specifically asked her for one. The speech occurred after school hours, “on the lawn and sidewalk.” There is no indication that students were engaged in any sort of structured activity at the time of the distribution, nor that the students were under the supervision of teachers, either of which might lend an appearance of imprimatur. Nor is there any indication that Stephanie distributed her materials to a captive audience of students who were not free to reject her speech.
Important to the conclusion that Principal Bomchill acted unconstitutionally is the fact that she allegedly restricted Stephanie’s “Jesus” pencils solely because of their message. From this pleaded fact, it can only be inferred that Stephanie would have been allowed to distribute her pencils if they had born a secular message.
The court also ruled that the law in this area is unclear enough that school officials themselves are not personally liable for the incidents in question. Because of that, they did not need to determine the constitutionality of each restriction.
