Kiesinger v. Mexico Academy and Central School, 00-1356 (N.D.N.Y. Mar. 31, 2006)
A New York federal district court has ruled that a school district’s decision to remove bricks containing religious messages from a walkway on school property that was part of a school fundraising project violated the First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause. The class of 1999 of Mexico Academy (N.Y.), with the approval of the superintendent and school board, sold bricks to members of the Mexico Academy community in order to finance a senior class trip. The bricks could be inscribed with a message. The only restriction placed on the content of the inscriptions was that they could not be vulgar or obscene or contain “love interest” messages. After the bricks were placed, some members of the community complained that the messages contained “specific references to a Christian God.” The school board initially attempted to quell the complaints by placing a disclaimer in the walkway, which disavowed any endorsement of the messages by the school. When the disclaimer failed to quiet the controversy, the board voted to remove all bricks with messages that referred to a “Christian God.” After reviewing the facts, the district court concluded that the walkway constituted a limited public forum because school officials had opened a portion of the campus to public expression with only the limited restrictions. The court agreed with the school district that a reasonable observer could conclude that the speech was school-sponsored because school officials sponsored the project and were aware of and approved of the content of each brick. As a result, the court found that any regulation of the speech by school officials was governed by Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, 484 U.S. 260 (1988), which allows school officials to regulate such speech so long as the regulation is “reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns.”
However, based on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit’s ruling in Peck v. Baldwinsville Central School District, 426 F.3d 617, 625 (2d Cir. 2005), the district court rejected the school district’s assertion that its content-based restrictions need not be viewpoint-neutral to be reasonable under Hazelwood. In Peck “the Second Circuit concluded ‘that a manifestly viewpoint discriminatory restriction on school-sponsored speech is, prima facie, unconstitutional, even if reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical interests.’” On the evidence presented, the court concluded that school officials had engaged in viewpoint discrimination based on the plaintiffs’ bricks referring to Jesus and offering a specific religious viewpoint on God. The court rejected the school district’s attempt to justify any viewpoint discrimination on the basis of its interest in preventing a disruption in the school environment and providing a religiously neutral environment by avoiding a First Amendment Establishment Clause violation. There was no evidence from which to conclude that the bricks raised the potential for disruption, the court concluded. As for the Establishment Clause justification, the court applied the three-prong test laid out in Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602, 612-13 (1971). Addressing the first prong, the district court found that the brick project’s purpose of raising money for the senior class trip was clearly secular. Turning to the second prong, it concluded, based on “the undisputed evidence, that an objective observer aware of the history of the walkway, Mexico Academy’s purposes, the wide variety of the bricks in the walkway, and who understands the endorsement concerns that arise in a school context where impressionable students may observe bricks with Christian messages, would perceive the effect of the walkway to be a collection of personal expressions and commemorative messages on many topics, including religion, not an endorsement of any particular religion, or of religion over nonreligion.” Lastly, the court found no excessive entanglement with religion because the contact with those placing religious messages was no greater than other businesses or individuals who purchased bricks. As a result, the court granted the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment on the free speech claim.
Kiesinger v. Mexico Academy and Central School, 00-1356 (N.D.N.Y. Mar. 31, 2006)
[Full opinion]
[Editor’s Note: This is the second round for this case in the district court. In 2002 the court denied the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction, even though it found that school officials had infringed on the plaintiffs’ free speech rights, because the court was not then convinced that the plaintiffs could prevail on the Establishment Clause issue. A summary of that decision is available below. COSA members and members of NSBA National Affiliate school districts also can access an overview of decisions in similar cases by NSBA Legal Research Specialist and Legal Clips writer Tom Burns.]
[NSBA School Law pages on 2002 decision]
Inquiry & Analysis
By Tom Burns
[Full article]