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 Wisconsin high school violating student’s constitutional rightsMar 23, 2005 Becket Fund lawyers say “God bless America” protected by First Amendment
The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty notified Wisconsin’s Fond du Lac High School today that it has violated a student’s constitutional rights by denying him the right to close an announcement with “God bless America.”
Calvin Freiburger, a junior at the school, has retained The Becket Fund—an interfaith, non-partisan, public-interest law firm dedicated to protecting the free expression of all religious traditions—to protect his rights.
“The School’s censorship displays an astonishing ignorance of the protections of the First Amendment,” declared Becket Fund Director of Litigation Derek Gaubatz. “If Calvin violated the Establishment Clause by saying ‘God bless America,’ then so has every politician in America, not to mention Irving Berlin.”
Freiburger, a member of the school’s Republican club, twice delivered over the school’s public announcement system, used by all student groups, a message about the club’s “Take a Solider to the Movies” Drive. The announcements, made in an effort to collect movies for U.S. soldiers serving overseas, concluded with the phrase “Thank you and God bless America.”
After delivering his second announcement, Freiburger was repeatedly told by the school’s principal and assistant principal that he could not use the use the phrase “God bless America” and that he needed to remove the word “God” from all future announcements. These school officials claimed that such speech violates principles of separation of church and state. When Freiburger refused to abide by the condition, he was prohibited from making any further announcements about the Drive.
In its letter, The Becket Fund explains that “Mr. Freiburger’s decision to use the phrase “God Bless America” to conclude the public announcement that he authored and spoke on behalf of himself and the student club he represented was private student-initiated speech, fully protected by the First Amendment.” By censoring Mr. Freiburger’s speech because of its perceived religious message, the school ran afoul of a long line of Supreme Court precedent that prohibits the government from singling out private religious speech for disfavor.
“A mere reference to God by a student—over the school’s intercom system or in the classroom, by saying ‘God Bless America’ after an announcement or ‘God Bless You’ after a sneeze—in no way constitutes government endorsement of religion that would offend the Establishment Clause,” notes Jared N. Leland, Media and Legal Counsel at The Becket Fund. “School officials are compelled by the Free Speech Clause to recognize this.”
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