Injunction issued in Holly free speech case

A federal district judge has issued a preliminary injunction (PDF) in a case filed against the Holly Area School District over the school district’s refusal to allow a student and parent from distributing invitations to a Christian summer camp to other students and parents at an elementary school there.

The student was forbidden by school officials from handing out flyers about the camp to schoolmates, even during non-instructional time. The student’s mother, Katharine Smith, was denied access to the school’s “flyer forum” by which parents and outside groups are allowed to send promotional material to other parents in the district.

In both cases, the school said that their policy forbids the handing out of any religious materials on school grounds — a clear violation of the First Amendment and numerous court precedents that forbid viewpoint discrimination by schools in such circumstances.

Students have every right to hand out literature to their classmates, whether it is of a religious nature or not, as long as they don’t do so in a disruptive manner. They can hand it out to other students in between classes, on lunch breaks and before or after school.

And if a school has an established forum allowing parents and outside groups to distribute literature to other parents, the school cannot arbitrarily decide that only non-religious literature may be distributed that way. Once an open public forum is created, the school (that is, the government) cannot discriminate against any particular viewpoint.

This is only a preliminary injunction, but one would hope that it prompts the school to quickly settle the case by rescinding their policy and affirming the free speech rights of students.