Education and the First Amendment

Education and the First Amendment
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Education and the First Amendment
The issue of religion in the United States (U.S.) public schools is addressed by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The First Amendment grants every American the right to express their religious beliefs. In public schools, the First Amendment prohibits school administrators, teachers, and other staff from discriminating or favoring students because of their religious expressions (U.S. Department of Education, 2020). Students are also allowed to express or share their religious beliefs, provided that by doing so, they do not infringe the rights of other students or cause a disruption in the classroom/school. This paper discusses the legal issues involved in the grading and display of a student’s essay that discussed Jesus, including a drawing of the Last Supper.
As public school officials, teachers acting in their official capacity are representative of the state and thus, the government. The First Amendment prohibits the government from endorsing religion and protects the private expression of religion (U.S. Department of Education, 2020). Therefore, teachers are prohibited from endorsing any religion in their official capacity. However, the protection of the rights of students to express their religion in public schools has been a thorny issue. Several court cases have addressed issues involving protected private expression of religious beliefs among students. In these cases, the courts have always sided with the school/teacher’s decision to exclude a student’s assignment when the student has covered a religious topic. For instance, in 1995, in Settle v. Dickson County School Board, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled against Settle, who had sued her teacher/school for assigning her a zero after writing a research paper on Jesus (Findlaw, n.d.a). The teacher had told the students to choose any topic but then rejected Settle’s on religious grounds. In 2000, a similar case was presented to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rdh Circuit. The court, in Carol Hood v. Medford Board Of Education, ruled against Hood, who had sued the school after her son’s teacher prevented him from reading his story in the classroom on religious grounds (Findlaw, n.d.b). The teacher had...