A northern Virginia school district allegedly prohibited a teacher from adding a Bible verse in her work email signature, prompting the teacher’s lawyers to send a demand letter to the district claiming it was in violation of the teacher’s First Amendment rights.
The unidentified teacher who works for Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) reportedly first had John 3:16 in her email signature. The verse from the Bible’s New Testament reads, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
The school opposed the verse, so the teacher offered to change it to Proverbs 22:6, a verse in the Bible’s Old Testament. It reads: “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”
This was also rejected by the school district for the same reason: it was a Bible verse, according to attorneys with the Liberty Counsel.
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Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “The decisions from the Supreme Court involving the Christian flag and Coach Kennedy send a clear message that the ‘Lemon Test’ has finally been buried and government must not discriminate based on religious viewpoint. Loudoun County Public Schools cannot discriminate against a teacher who wants to use a Bible verse in her signature when other teachers are including nonreligious quotes.”
The school district permits teachers to personalize their signature blocks with quotations, pictures, phrases, or pronouns that are intended to express the teachers’ personal views on a variety of subjects, and that are attributable to the teachers, and not to the school district, according to the Liberty Counsel.
For example, one teacher uses a quote by Cesar Chavez (“Real education should consist of drawing the goodness and the best out of our students”) and another has a quote by Frederick Douglass (“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men”). Other teachers also include simple motivational quotes such as “Have courage and be kind,” and others include small pictures under their signatures with an encouraging or inspiring message.
Acting Superintendent Dr. Daniel Smith, Ed.D. claimed that LCPS School Board Policy 7566 prohibits the teacher from using the Bible verse in her email signature. However, in reality, the policy only forbids obscene or vulgar language and conduct prohibited by law.
Smith responded to Liberty Counsel’s letter last Friday stating, “Simply put, the general inclusion of religious quotes in communications LCPS employees send while in their public capacities is not private expression and runs afoul of the Establishment Clause, and as such, bars LCPS, as a local governmental entity, from taking sides in religious disputes or favoring or disfavoring anyone based on religion or belief, or lack thereof.”
“To be clear, LCPS’s determination is not based on any particular religious viewpoint, and LCPS would take a consistent approach as it has here with respect to any religious expression incorporated in an LCPS employee’s email signature block of which it becomes aware,” Smith continued.
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But Liberty Counsel pushed back against Smith’s claims, noting LCPS does not have a written policy governing email signature blocks and incorrectly claimed that including the Bible verse is prohibited by the Establishment Clause.
“The First Amendment requires that the school district may not discriminate against the teacher’s private religious expression, the law firm noted. In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court and various federal courts have confirmed that organizations and individuals holding a religious viewpoint may not be subject to discrimination or censorship on the basis of that viewpoint,” the law firm pointed out in a statement, citing two examples.
“For example, in Liberty Counsel’s case, Shurtleff v. City of Boston, the High Court unanimously ruled that the city of Boston violated the Constitution by censoring a private flag in a public forum open to ‘all applicants’ merely because the application referred to it as a ‘Christian flag.’ The High Court unanimously rejected Boston’s use of the ‘Lemon Test’ to censor Christian viewpoints,” the statement continued.
“Then in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the High Court ruled in favor of the high school football coach and also finally buried the court-made “Lemon Test” citing Liberty Counsel’s 9-0 decision handed down in Shurtleff v. City of Boston involving the Christian flag,” the Liberty Counsel’s statement concluded.
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