Today, Liberty Institute attorneys sent a demand letter, on behalf of
clients Marcos Perez and his daughter, to school administrators at Carillon
Elementary School in Oviedo, Florida, requesting that school officials cease
engaging in religious discrimination in violation of federal and state law. Last
week, a school lunchroom supervisor told Marcos Perez’s 5-year-old daughter
that it was wrong to bow her head in prayer before she ate her lunch.
"Of course, students can pray at school!" said Liberty Institute
Senior Counsel Jeremy Dys. "As the Supreme Court held over half a
century ago: Students do not ‘shed their constitutional rights to freedom of
speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.’ The school is in violation
of Department of Education guidelines that specifically protect this type of
prayer, and thus could jeopardize its federal funding.”
The Perez Family cited this offense to their daughter’s religious liberty as
the most immediate reason to remove their daughter from the public education
system. “Mainly because of this incident, we have exercised our option as
parents to teach our daughter at home,” said Marcos Perez. “We live in a
very good school district, but we cannot, in good conscience, send our daughter
to a school where her religious liberty has been compromised.”
Liberty Institute continues to investigate this situation on behalf of its
clients and other students, who experience unnecessary censoring of their
religious liberty while at school. Last Fall, Liberty Institute represented
10-year-old Erin Shead, whose teacher informed her that she could not write an
essay about Jesus as her hero. That situation lead to the Tennessee
General Assembly passing a bill with overwhelming bipartisan support to expand
student religious liberty. Similarly, Liberty Institute is still
investigating claims by a mother in South Carolina, who was told that her
8-year-old daughter could not complete a similar school assignment for fear of
violating the so-called, "separation of church and state."
No comments:
Post a Comment