Settlement Reached In School's Ban of Religious Valentines

Alliance Defending Freedom this week announced a settlement leading to a voluntary dismissal in J.S. v. Nazareth Area School District, (ED PA, Oct. 22, 2014). The suit challenged a Pennsylvania elementary school's refusal to allow a student to hand out Valentine cards containing a religious message. (See prior posting.) In the settlement, the school district has removed language from its policies that prohibited student expression seeking to establish the supremacy of a particular religious view or denomination. The Morning Call reporting on the settlement quotes a school board attorney who says that even under the revised policy the particular Valentine message at issue here may have not been permitted because its discussion of St. Valentine's martyrdom may have been too adult a topic.