On July 10, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed HB 2357, the Students' Religious Liberties Act. It bars public schools from discriminating against parents or students on the basis of religious viewpoints or expression, including religious viewpoints included in class assignments, artwork or coursework. It provides that students may pray or engage in religious activities or expression before, during and after the school day in the same manner that students are allowed to engage in nonreligious expression or activities.
Students are permitted to wear clothing that displays a religious message, or religious jewelry, to the same extent that clothing or jewelry with other messages or symbols is allowed. The law specifically, though, permits banning of clothing and accessories denoting criminal street gang affiliation. The new law goes on to provide that it shall not be interpreted to require any student to participate in prayer or other religious activity, or to otherwise violate a student's constitutional rights. Finally it requires exhaustion of internal administrative complaint procedures before a parent or student may bring a lawsuit to enforce the provisions of the statute. AP reported on the signing of the bill.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Arizona Governor Signs Students' Religious Liberties Act
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6 comments:
Maybe I'm missing something, but aren't all those things the AZ bill allows already allowed/protected under the US Constitution?
Yes.
However, I'm not displeased this bill was passed. Teachers are generally awful at upholding any kind of Constitutional rights at all, to the point where I'm extremely leery of any K-12 teacher teaching it. A class bill of rights exercise for my oldest son had been turned into a laundry list of things students need to do to ensure their right to study. Teachers would freely restrict their students' rights to practice without giving the Constitution a second's thought. Highlighting it and also making it a state offense is only beneficial.
I certainly wouldn't object to a state legislating that a child did not need to stand for the Pledge or say "Under God", for example, even though this is already supposedly protected by the Constitution (actually, I might depending on what the legislation actually said, but that's a separate topic). The AZ legislation seems to be aimed at upholding the Constitution, even though it's also a bit of a political pander.
I cam concerned about the statement: "It provides that students may pray or engage in religious activities or expression before, during and after the school day in the same manner that students are allowed to engage in nonreligious expression or activities."
Does this mean that if a student engages in normal classroom "activities," he or she can spend of the classroom time praying to Jesus or any other god or gods?
I'm not sure I understand your concern, Bob. Stripped of content, a prayer is essentially a soliloquy. If a student would be permitted a secular soliloquy, I think that statute would assert that the student is permitted a religious one.
I guess it doesn't quite mirror the Constitution, though. While it's true that a student may generally engage in religious activities, this isn't always the case where it would give the "illusion" (I doubt it's really always illusory) of school sponsorship of the opinion.
The wording is carefully chosen to avoid or delay constitutional challenge, but the intent of the law is to allow Christians to evangelize. That is what they complain about under the rubric of "discrimination." If their religion (and, I suppose, Islam) didn't have the absurd requirement to proselytize, then "free exercise" could be left wide open without major issues.
But the fact is, LilithsPriest, that Christians can point to instances where students have been restricted. Where Bibles have been confiscated from students or students have been prevented from praying. It's not common, but it does exist.
And students are generally permitted to evangelize under the Constitution to other students, so long as there is no appearance of school sponsorship.
Consider that the bill also should allow a student to wear a shirt saying, "Christ is not God" or "There is no God" or "You can be good without God". I wouldn't normally want schools interfering with either these statements by students or their inverse corollaries.
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