Tag Archives: Topic: Education

Idaho State Journal (AP): A lawsuit to force a group touting public schools chief Tom Luna’s education overhaul to reveal its still-secret financiers was returned to state court after Secretary of State Ben Ysursa argued a ploy to move the matter to federal court was a desperate delay tactic.

Baltimore Sun: Asked to support the ad’s claim, Frank Schubert, the consultant running the campaign against same-sex marriage in Maryland and other states, said “it necessarily follows” that schools would teach same-sex marriage if Question 6 is approved.

Indy Blog: Often accused of a bent toward fundamental Christianity, the Air Force Academy will hold its Biannual Religious Respect Conference on Tuesday and Wednesday. But its biggest critic, Mikey Weinstein, won’t be there.

ChristianNews.net: A school district in Wayne, Indiana has banned a local youth pastor from speaking to students about spiritual matters at lunchtime.

LifeNews: Christendom College’s pro-life group, Shield of Roses, held its biggest protest in 35 years of its existence this past Saturday. On October 27, over 225 students, faculty, staff, and visitors traveled to Washington, D.C., to peacefully protest abortion at the Planned Parenthood clinic, located just north of the White House, on 16th Street.

MagicValley.com (AP): A judge ruled Monday that a nonprofit group must disclose donors who financed more than $200,000 in campaign ads touting public schools chief Tom Luna’s education overhaul. Fourth District Judge Michael Wetherell ruled in favor of Secretary of State Ben Ysursa, who had filed the lawsuit against Education Voters of Idaho. Wetherell gave the group a deadline of 3 p.m. Wednesday to disclose its donors.

Boston Globe: The student government at Tufts University has taken measures to “de-recognize” an evangelical group on campus because the group requires its leaders to adhere to “basic biblical truths of Christianity,” student government members said on Friday.

One News Now: Louisiana State University has created an uproar by digitally erasing tiny crosses from a photo of the school’s famous “Painted Posse,” a group of avid Christian students rooting for the LSU football team.

LIberty Institute: Liberty Institute is responding to misinformation being disseminated by atheist groups to public school districts throughout the country. In legal information letters mailed this month, Liberty Institute encourages and reminds school administrators that the Constitution still protects the rights of students to engage in free speech and religious expression at various events.

Jeremy Tedesco at Alliance Defending Freedom Blog: Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU) recently published a blistering blog post attacking Alliance Defending Freedom’s and Focus on the Family’s new Anti-Bullying Policy Yardstick. The misleading post warrants a response . . .

David J. Hacker at the Speak Up Movement University Blog: Alliance Defending Freedom received an outstanding First Amendment victory Tuesday when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled against Oregon State University in OSU Student Alliance v. Ray, a case brought by The Liberty, an independent student newspaper at OSU.

Rep-Am.com: The American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut has spanked the Region 15 Board of Education after some board members said they wanted to require students to say the Pledge of Allegiance at school.

Prattville.wsfa.com: An Autauga County school is the latest to receive a letter of complaint from the Freedom From Religion Foundation regarding religious verses displayed on banners by the high school’s cheerleaders.

Church Report: A jury found Wednesday that a conservative scholar who claims she was passed over for jobs at the University of Iowa law school because of liberal bias didn’t have her 1st Amendment rights violated.

National Law Journal: The University of St. Thomas School of Law has named Robert Vischer as its new dean, effective on January 1. Vischer, now associate dean for academic affairs, has taught at the Roman Catholic-affiliated law school since 2005. He replaces Thomas Mengler, who stepped down in May to assume the deanship at St. Mary’sUniversity School of Law. Professor Neil Hamilton has been serving as interim dean.

One News Now: “They put together a display that incorporated both the homecoming theme and their Christian message, put that up in the window, and they hadn’t even finished outlining the cross in their display before the student affairs staff was all upset and started chastising them right out there on the public sidewalk,” Barham reports.

Christian Post: DF Senior Counsel David Cortman argued that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit should affirm the district court order. There was no decision made by the court during the hearing Wednesday involving the school district. “Public schools should encourage, not shut down, the free exchange of ideas – and that certainly includes a 5th-grader’s Christmas party invitations,” Cortman said. “America’s public schools should recognize the constitutionally protected freedom of religious students who wish to hand out these kinds of fliers. The district court was right to stop this unconstitutional ban on Christmas party invitations. Numerous courts have upheld similar fliers around the country.”

A federal court Thursday suspended two policies behind a Florida school’s ban on religious invitations while a lawsuit against the Hillsborough County School Board moves forward in court.

Pocono Record: The Alliance Defending Freedom sued the district in March, claiming the student’s free speech rights were violated because the district has let students hand out fliers for other events, including Halloween parties and even the plaintiff’s younger sibling’s birthday party.

AP: An audit of the U.S. Department of Education’s division overseeing hundreds of millions of dollars in charter school funding has criticized the office for failing to properly monitor how states spend the money.

WorldNetDaily: Republican Vice Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan backed homeschool freedom at a recent campaign event in Florida. At the town hall-style event in Ocala, Florida, on Thursday, October 18, the following exchange took place. We encourage you to watch the video clip. Transcript . . .

Religion Clause Blog: In a press release announcing the filing of the lawsuit, Alliance Defending Freedom says it has delayed serving defendants in order to give the college time to change its mind and avoid litigation.

TimesOnline.com (AP): The Alliance Defending Freedom sued the Pocono Mountain School District in March, claiming the student’s free speech rights were violated because the district has let students hand out fliers for other events, including Halloween parties and even the plaintiff’s younger sibling’s birthday party.

Deseret News: “Colleges are supposed to be the marketplace of ideas, not centers of censorship,” said Travis Barham, a Georgia-based attorney for the Alliance Defending Freedom. The First Amendment, he said, allows like-minded students to gather and to express their ideas, including religious students and religious ideas.

AP: Jurors are deliberating for a third day as they consider whether a conservative woman rejected for jobs at the University of Iowa law school is the victim of political discrimination.

Salt Lake Tribune: “By refusing to treat faith-based student organizations the same as other student groups and by excluding religious speech from homecoming events, Snow College officials have ignored this basic principle,” said Travis Barham, litigation staff counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing the club. ” But we hope they will quickly do the right thing, respect our clients’ freedoms, and eliminate the need for continuing to pursue this lawsuit.”

In a stinging decision against Oregon State University, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled Tuesday that university officials violated the constitutionally protected freedoms of an independent student newspaper when they confiscated its bins and tossed them onto a trash heap.

Alliance Defending Freedom filed a federal lawsuit Monday against Utah’s Snow College on behalf of a Christian student group banned from including religious speech as part of a homecoming event.

Fox News: “There’s a deep concern that the Encinitas Union School District is using taxpayer resources to promote Ashtanga yoga and Hinduism, a religion system of beliefs and practices,” the parents’ attorney, Dean Broyles, told the North County Times.

lliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel David Cortman and Legal Counsel Matt Sharp will be available for media interviews immediately following Cortman’s oral argument at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit Wednesday in favor of allowing elementary school students to distribute Christmas party fliers at school.

Education News: Lawyers representing hundreds of school districts challenging the state’s school funding system argued Monday that it’s “hopelessly broken,” but an attorney for the state said the situation isn’t as dire as the districts portray.

Religion Clause Blog: In Youth Alive v. Hauppauge School District, (ED NY, Oct. 12, 2012), a New York federal district court dismissed for lack of standing a claim by a high school after-school Bible club that the school board violated the Equal Protection clause when, in order to comply with the federal Equal Access Act, it refused to furnish the club a paid advisor.

Townhall: The Obama Department of Justice has shown surprising indifference to religious liberty by declining to follow the DOJ’s earlier repeated support for the right of religious groups to meet for worship services in New York City public schools during non-school hours.

City found liable for illegally plotting to stop Catholic school’s plan to build more classrooms for young women

Baltimore Sun: Gallaudet University is asking the group opposing Maryland’s same-sex marriage law to take down a new commercialthat features a university staff member who was suspended for signing a referendum petition.

WATE.com: The group Americans United for Separation of Church and State posted a video to YouTube showing what it says is a local pastor praying before a recent Lenor City School board meeting.

Inside Higher Ed: A sharply divided federal appeals court on Wednesday refused to reconsider a March ruling that revived a lawsuit by a former graduate student against the University of Oregon. And the dissenting judges on the appeals court say that the refusal could endanger academic freedom and l leave faculty members vulnerable to litigious graduate students. The lawsuit charges that the university illegally retaliated against the graduate student after she complained of gender discrimination against female doctoral students in her program.

Religion Clause Blog: According to Chabad Lubavitch News, an appellate court in Sweden yesterday struck down a law that barred Chabad parents from home schooling their children through Chabad’s International Shluchim Online School and private lessons.

ABC: A judge says an East Texas school district policy barring cheerleaders from quoting biblical scripture on banners at high school football games appears to violate their free speech rights.

Church Report: Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said Wednesday he will defend high school cheerleaders who want to use Bible verses on banners at football games . . . “This is student-led expression, and that’s perfectly constitutional,” Abbott said. “We will not allow atheist groups from outside the state of Texas to come into the state to use menacing and misleading and intimidating tactics to try to bully schools to bow down to the alter of secular beliefs.”

The Mississippi Press: The American Civil Liberties Union demanded Wednesday that a south Mississippi school stop holding prayers and promoting religious activities at games and other events.

Edmonton Journal: Religious freedom and parental authority are also endangered, according to Darrell. He said the evidence from Canada and states that have legalized homosexual marriage shows tolerance for disagreement evaporating and parents being told they don’t have a say in what their kids are taught.

Kenneth Anderson at the Volokh Conspiracy: One of the more practical debates over the law school business model asks about the third year of law school. Is it actually necessary – and even if, in principle, it might be a good idea, is it at the prices law schools now charge? If it is kept – which seems pretty likely for most schools, given the existing business model – how can it be changed to make it more useful to students?

Carolina Live (includes video): Tuesday evening Georgetown County School Board held a meeting with a full agenda. One thing that wasn’t on there though, was a prayer. After ACLU sent a Freedom of Information Act request to all South Carolina school districts asking about prayer in their schools, in response, Georgetown County pulled prayer from their meetings.

Kay Bailey Hutchison and Barbara Mikulski at Wall Street Journal: Education proponents across the political spectrum were dismayed by recent attempts to eradicate the single-gender options in public schools in Virginia, West Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi, Maine and Florida. We were particularly troubled at efforts to thwart education choice for American students and their families because it is a cause we have worked hard to advance.

LifeSiteNews: Being pro-life and supporting traditional marriage could cost you a tenured position at a public law school, according to a lawsuit filed in Iowa. Teresa Wagner has sued the University of Iowa, saying the law school has denied her two positions over the last five years because of her work in the National Right to Life Committee and the Family Research Center. The trial got underway in Davenport today.

John Whitehead at the Rutherford Institute: [P]ublic school reform is now justified in the dehumanizing language of national security, which increasingly legitimates the transformation of schools into adjuncts of the surveillance and police state… students are increasingly subjected to disciplinary apparatuses which limit their capacity for critical thinking, mold them into consumers, test them into submission, strip them of any sense of social responsibility and convince large numbers of poor minority students that they are better off under the jurisdiction of the criminal justice system than by being valued members of the public schools.”—Professor Henry Giroux

Jeremy Tedesco appeared on the Georgene Rice Show discuss the Pro-Life Day of Silent Solidarity. | MP3 audio 7:49 mins

Religion Clause Blog: Last month, in Republic v. The Head Teacher, Kenya High School, (High Ct. Kenya, Sept. 18, 2012), the High Court in Narobi, Kenya upheld the uniform requirements of Kenya High School which bar Muslim girls from wearing the hijab . . .

Education News: Charter school “caps” are state-imposed limits on the size or growth of charter sectors. Currently, around 25 states set caps on schools or enrollment, with wide variation in terms of specifics: Some states simply set a cap on the number of schools (or charters in force); others limit annual growth; and still others specify caps on both growth and size (there are also a few places that cap proportional spending, coverage by individual operators and other dimensions).

Washington Times: Business Insider has interviewed a Dartmouth admissions officer recently who gave some interesting insight on not only how long an college admissions officer spends time on reading an application but also what kind of applicant, based on race and economic background, is more likely to get shafted . . .

LifeSiteNews: Since it was launched on Friday, over 3,500 Canadians and counting, mostly from Ontario, have signed a petition calling on Dalton McGuinty’s Education Minister to resign after she told media that Catholic schools should no longer be teaching that abortion is wrong.

Baptist Press: The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) signed on to a friend-of-the-court brief filed Oct. 12 that asked a federal appeals court to reverse the dismissal of two lawsuits against the controversial requirement under the 2010 health care law. The brief supports challenges by Wheaton College, an evangelical Christian school in suburban Chicago, and Belmont Abbey College, a Roman Catholic institution in North Carolina, to the mandate that employers provide workers with health insurance that covers contraceptives and abortion-causing drugs.

Alliance Defending Freedom is offering free legal assistance to public school students who participate in the Pro-Life Day of Silent Solidarity if their First Amendment freedoms aren’t respected.

Daily Mail: Elon University’s student government has voted to ban a Chick-fil-a restaurant on campus because the fast-food chain’s president opposes gay marriage. The North Carolina university’s Student Government Association approved the ban with a vote of 35-11. Association president Darien Flowers could still veto the ban but if he approves it the group will formally ask the restaurant to find another business to take its space.

Fox News: aliban thugs who shot a teen activist in the head may succeed in scaring Pakistani families out of sending girls to school, but they also may have created a powerful martyr who could turn the public against them, say human rights activists.

LifeNews: Last year, when thousands of students across the nation participated in the Pro-life Day of Silent Solidarity, 60 girls canceled their abortions. Now, director Bryan Kemper is urging students to join in again . . . Over the past few years many schools have tried to stop students from participating and quash their First Amendment rights. Every year, attorneys from the Alliance Defense Fund defend these students and file lawsuits to protect their rights.

LifeNews: The University of Texas in Houston School of Public Health (UTSPH) has removed evidence from its website showing Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast as its “partner agency.” The removal comes after STOPP revealed last week that the UT Prevention Research Center is partnering with Planned Parenthood in its core activity, “the diffusion of effective health promotion programs to health and education agencies, and the provision of training to health agency professionals to develop and evaluate effective health promotion programs locally and nationally.”

Alliance Defending Freedom Blog: This year’s Pro-Life Day of Silent Solidarity is scheduled for Tuesday, October 16, 2012 and you can take part.  Alliance Defending Freedom supports this important movement by providing students with information about their First Amendment rights and working to ensure they are able to participate in the event free from unconstitutional restraints.  We have prepared a letter for you to share with school officials who have questions about the event and are here to defend your right to exercise religious freedom at school.  If you experience any difficulty promoting or participating in the event, please contact us at 1-800-835-5233, on our website at www.alliancedefendingfreedom.org, or atfacebook.com/AllianceDefendingFreedom

Baltimore Sun: Gov. Martin O’Malley and other supporters of the law to allow same-sex marriage in Maryland called Thursday for the reinstatement of a university administrator who was placed on leave for signing a petition aimed at overturning the measure. “Everyone has a right to their opinion, and everyone has a right to participate in the political process,” O’Malley said. The legislation, he said, “is about treating everyone fairly and equally under the law.”

The New American: It took the complaint of just one parent to induce the school district of Shorewood, a suburb of Milwaukee, to drop a new student-designed logo from the high school football team’s helmets. The reason: The logo included a cross, along with a bishop’s hat (similar to the design on the traditional chess piece). The district’s superintendent, Martin Lexmond, no doubt feared that the religious symbols, particularly the cross, might raise the ire of the ACLU, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, or some other secular group which have used the First Amendment’s supposed “separation of church and state” clause to intimidate schools and municipalities into removing all signs of religious faith from public facilities.

Tennessean: The Sumner County Board of Education and American Civil Liberties Union settled a lawsuit over teacher-prayer and promoting Christianity in schools in December, but the two sides will soon head to mediation to work out a compromise in attorneys’ fees. Court records show attorneys representing the ACLU, the prevailing plaintiffs, are asking a judge to award $284,321 for legal fees and litigation expenses to be paid by the school board.

Mark Oppenheimer at NYT: In June, a sociologist named Mark Regnerus published a paper arguing that young adults with a parent who had had a same-sex relationship fared worse than those raised by biological parents without histories of same-sex relationships.

LifeSiteNews: In what pro-life leaders are calling a stunning and unprecedented attack on religious freedom, Ontario’s Education Minister has apparently declared that Catholic schools can no longer teach that abortion is wrong. Laurel Broten, who serves under Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty, said Wednesday that Catholic schools are barred from teaching this core moral belief because Bill 13, the government’s controversial “anti-bullying” law, prohibits “misogyny.”

Mathew J. Franck at Imprimis: HERE IS A GROWING awareness among Americans that religious freedom in our country has come under sustained pressures. In the public square where freedom of religion meets public policy, it becomes clearer all the time that there is a high price to be paid for being true to one’s conscience. This is no tale of Chicken Little—although a chain of chicken sandwich restaurants based in Atlanta is part of the story. Let me give you a few examples.

David Bernstein at the Volokh Conspiracy: Justice Alito . . . If you have -you have an applicant whose parents are — let’s say they’re — one of them is a partner in your law firm in Texas, another one is a part — is another corporate lawyer. They have income that puts them in the top 1 percent of earners in the country, and they have -parents both have graduate degrees. They deserve a leg-up against, let’s say, an Asian or a white applicant whose parents are absolutely average in terms of education and income? . . .

GateWayPundit: A bus driver told a 12 year-old student that he should have been aborted because his family had a Romney-Ryan sign in their yard. Freedom Eden reported . . .

Ken Klukowski at Breitbart: Government preferring one racial group over another in college admissions may be about to end, in what would be a historic move by the Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Roberts said that Supreme Court precedent requires that “there has to be a logical end point to your use of race. What is the logical end point? When will I know that you’ve reached a critical mass?” The government’s inability to answer that question might mean that the end point will come in a few months when the Court hands down its decision.

Religion Clause Blog: In Gillio v. School Board of Hillsborough County, Florida, (MD FL, Oct. 5, 2012), a Florida federal magistrate judge recommended issuance of a preliminary injunction to allow a 4th grade student to distribute invitations to a church organized Easter egg hunt to fellow classmates.

Kevin Theriot at the Speak Up Movement University Blog: This cancer of liberal bias in our public education system has metastasized to the point that teachers and professors have no fear of repercussion when they attempt to force students in their charge to accept their extreme values. And a more recent reportindicates a school in Tampa actually allowed a pro-Obama  organization to campaign in that high school (without equal time for a GOP group), though school officials claim they were deceived into thinking the group was from the elections office. We need some serious constitutional chemotherapy and that begins with parents and students – from elementary school to college - getting informed about their fundamental rights and responsibilities. You can start by accessing our resources atAllianceDefendingFreedom.org/Education or contacting us at 800-835-5233 if you need free legal advice on how to stand up like my new heroine Samanta Pawlucy at your school.

Speak Up Movement: Yale, the home of some of the most infamous secret societies in the country (like the one portrayed in the 2000 teen-thriller The Skulls), decided last week to deny official recognition to a Christian fraternity, Beta Upsilon Chi (BYX), because the fraternity requires members and leaders to share a common Christian faith.

One News Now: Rather than submit to the scare tactics and bullying from the atheist group, Jeremy Dys of the Family Policy Council of West Virginia says students and families of Sissonville High took it upon themselves to defy the Foundation . . . Dys’ organization and Alliance Defending Freedom are offering assistance to help the school create a policy for student-initiated, pregame Christian speech.

OutQNews.com: A leading civil rights organization says it’s ending its successful campaign designed to address the censorship of LGBT web content in public schools nationwide.

The College Fix: Incest-Fest is, essentially, a campus party where making out and hooking up with as many people as possible is the goal. It gets the “incest” name because the event is open only to residents of Kirkland house–one of Harvard’s undergraduate residences. Thus, students who are living together (as if they were members of the same family, get it?? Incest? So funny, right?) are having sex with one another.

InAmerica: The Broward County school district in Florida signed a resolution in September in support of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Transgender Americans. Last week, the Los Angeles school district, the nation’s second-largest, also signed on. The two districts have more than 1 million students.