Opinion ID: 3010926
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: a big family

Text: While the parties dispute some details, they agree that (1) A Big Family was an appropriate response to the assignment given by Ms. Oliva to her first-grade class in the sense that it was a favorite story of Z.H.'s and was of appropriate length and reading complexity, and (2) Z.H. was permitted to read A Big Family only to his teacher and not to his classmates in class because it was a story based upon the Bible. Accordingly, the issue presented by the undisputed facts can be simply stated: whether public school students in the first grade have a First Amendment right to present religious material in class where that material is responsive to a teacher's assignment. Plaintiff correctly points out that state policies that restrict expression of religious perspectives are not viewpoint neutral even where those policies apply equally to all religious perspectives. While such policies do not discriminate against any particular religious faith, they do discriminate against non-secular perspectives. See Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of the Univ. of Va., 515 U.S. 819, 831 (1995); Lamb's Chapel v. Center Moriches Sch. Dist., 508 U.S. 384, 393-94 (1993). As a result, plaintiff insists such restrictions are precluded by the First Amendment where, as here, they are not narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest. The defendants respond that, in the context of afirstgrade classroom, a teacher must be able to take cognizance _________________________________________________________________ 347-52 (D. N.J. 1996). In so doing, the District Court dismissed the State Department of Education as a defendant on Eleventh Amendment grounds and removed C.H. as a plaintiff in her personal capacity because she lacked standing. Id. at 348-49. 6 of the fact that state-compelled exposure of young children to religious material is a matter of great sensitivity among members of a school community. Defendants insist that students of this age are very impressionable and cannot be relied upon to distinguish between those things their teacher endorses and those things she merely allows to be expressed in her classroom. Accordingly, the defendants urge that the situation confronted by Ms. Oliva held a realistic and substantial risk of the school's being perceived by the students and their parents as endorsing the Bible before a captive and vulnerable audience. They conclude that teachers must be permitted to avoid subject matter holding this kind of potential for disruptive controversy.
Although it is undisputed that public school students  `do not shed their constitutional rights . . . at the schoolhouse gate,' the nature of those rights is[determined by] what is appropriate for children in school. Veronica Sch. Dist. 47J v. Acton, 515 U.S. 646, 655-56 (1995) (quoting Tinker v. Des Moines Indep. Comm. Sch. Dist., 393 U.S. 503, 506 (1969)). The State's power over school children . . . is custodial and tutelary, permitting a degree of supervision and control that cannot be exercised over free adults. Id. at 655. Moreover, it is well accepted that public schools perform a critical role in shaping the nation's youth, and that federal courts should be wary of interfering in this process. As the Supreme Court observed more than thirty years ago: Courts do not and cannot intervene in the resolution of conflicts which arise in the daily operation of school systems and which do not directly and sharply implicate basic constitutional values. Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97, 104 (1968). Over the years, the Court has repeatedly reemphasized this theme. E.g., Bethel Sch. Dist. No. 403 v. Fraser, 478 U.S. 675, 682 (1986); Hazelwood Sch. Dist. v. Kuhlmeier, 484 U.S. 260, 266 (1988). With this foundation, we turn to the Supreme Court precedent most helpful in the current context, Hazelwood 7 Sch. Dist. v. Kuhlmeier, 484 U.S. 260 (1988). In Hazelwood, the Supreme Court considered whether a public school's decision to excise two articles from the student paper violated the students' First Amendment rights. The newspaper, Spectrum, was written and edited by the high school's Journalism II class, under the direction of the teacher, and was published and printed with funds supplied by the high school. Prior to the final press run of the school year, the teacher reviewed the year'sfinal edition and objected to two stories that were scheduled to be included. One of the stories described the experiences of three of the school's students with pregnancy, the other discussed the impact of divorce on students at the school, and both were written in a manner that might have revealed the identity of at least some of the students and parents discussed. Because he believed there was insufficient time before the scheduled press run to modify the stories, the teacher elected to pull the stories from the press run with the approval of his superiors. The Supreme Court first addressed the issue of whether Spectrum could appropriately be characterized as a public forum. The Court found that the school had never evinced an intent to open the pages of Spectrum to `indiscriminate use' by its student[s], and, on the contrary, had reserve[d] the forum for its intended purpos[e] as a supervised learning experience for journalism students. Hazelwood, 484 U.S. at 270 (internal citations and quotation marks omitted). For these reasons, Spectrum was found to be a non-public forum. This meant that the school was entitled to exercise control over the content of the paper for purposes other than maintaining discipline and avoiding disruption of the learning process. The Hazelwood Court then explained that there was an important additional distinction between speech that may be perceived as promoted by a school and speech that a school is asked only to tolerate: The question whether the First Amendment requires a school to tolerate particular student speech . . . is different from the question whether the First Amendment requires a school affirmatively to promote particular student speech. The former question 8 addresses educators' ability to silence a student's personal expression that happens to occur on the school premises. The latter question concerns educators' authority over school-sponsored publications, theatrical productions, and other expressive activities that students, parents, and members of the public might reasonably perceive to bear the imprimatur of the school. These activities may fairly be characterized as part of the school curriculum, whether or not they occur in a traditional classroom setting, so long as they are supervised by faculty members and designed to impart particular knowledge or skills to student participants and audiences. Hazelwood, 484 U.S. at 270-71. Hazelwood teaches that student expression that is a part of a school curriculum may be subject to greater restrictions than tolerated speech and articulates the relevant legal standard to be applied in cases involving such expression: Educators are entitled to exercise greater control over this . . . form of student expression to assure that participants learn whatever lessons the activity is designed to teach, that readers or listeners are not exposed to material that may be inappropriate for their level of maturity, and that the views of the individual speaker are not erroneously attributed to the school. . . . [E]ducators do not offend the First Amendment by exercising . . . control over the style and content of student speech in school-sponsored expressive activities so long as their actions are reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns. Id. at 271-73 (emphasis added). The Court gave the following examples of the kinds of restrictions that would be considered reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns: [A] school must be able to take into account the emotional maturity of the intended audience in determining whether to disseminate student speech on 9 potentially sensitive topics, which might range from the existence of Santa Claus in an elementary school setting to the particulars of teenage sexual activity in a high school setting. A school must also retain the authority to refuse to sponsor student speech that might reasonably be perceived to advocate drug or alcohol use, irresponsible sex, or conduct otherwise inconsistent with the shared values of a civilized social order, or to associate the school with any position other than neutrality on matters of political controversy. Id. at 272 (quoting Bethel Sch. Dist. No. 403 v. Fraser, 478 U.S. 675, 683 (1986)). It is apparent from these examples that a viewpointbased restriction on student speech in the classroom may be reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns and thus permissible. A rule foreclosing classroom speech that promotes the use of alcohol or that advocates a position on a controversial political issue is recognized by Hazelwood to be permissible even though it is not viewpoint neutral. After thus explicating the legitimate pedagogical concerns standard, the Hazelwood Court turned to the case before it and conducted a contextual analysis that took into account the sensitive nature of the subject matter of the excised articles and the ages of the intended audience, as well as the privacy interests of the students and parents that might have been identified. The ultimate conclusion was that the First Amendment rights of the student journalists had not been violated. In the course of reaching this conclusion, the Court rejected the argument that school officials should be permitted to exercise prepublication control over school-sponsored student expression only pursuant to preestablished criteria. It believed that preestablished regulations in the context of a curricular activity could unduly constrain the ability of educators to educate. Hazelwood, 484 U.S. at 273 n.6 Hazelwood clearly stands for the proposition that educators may impose non-viewpoint neutral restrictions on the content of student speech in school-sponsored 10 expressive activities so long as those restrictions are reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns. Contrary to plaintiff 's suggestion, this remains the law of the land. Plaintiff insists that under Lamb's Chapel v. Center Moriches Sch. Dist., 508 U.S. 385 (1993), and Rosenberger v. Rector, 515 U.S. 819 (1995), absent a compelling state interest, it is no longer permissible under any circumstances for a school to prohibit religious perspectives while permitting secular ones. Lamb's Chapel and Rosenberger are distinguishable from Hazelwood, however. The student speech at issue in both Rosenberger and Lamb's Chapel is more appropriately characterized as tolerated, rather than promoted, speech. Indeed, Rosenberger expressly distinguished and preserved Hazelwood on this ground. In Lamb's Chapel, a public school restricted speech by permitting numerous community organizations to access its facility for after-hours use, while denying a church organization access when it sought to use the facilities to show a film series on family and child-rearing issues from a Christian perspective. In Rosenberger, the University restricted student speech by refusing to grant funding from a student activities fund for extracurricular activities to a student-run publication with an explicitly Christian perspective, even though such funding was granted to other student organizations. In neither case did the expressive activity at issue occur in a traditional classroom setting, . . . supervised by faculty members and designed to impart particular knowledge or skills to students, as in Hazelwood. Hazelwood, 484 U.S. at 570. Moreover, Rosenberger distinguished Hazelwood on the ground that the latter dealt with the State's ability to impose restrictions on the school's own speech, whereas Rosenberger addressed state restrictions on private, or tolerated, speech: [W]hen the [State] determines the content of the education it provides, it is the [State] speaking, and we have permitted the government to regulate the content of what is or is not expressed when it is the speaker . . . . It does not follow, however, . . . that viewpointbased restrictions are proper when the [State] does not 11 itself speak or subsidize transmittal of a message it favors . . . . A holding that the [State] may not discriminate based on the viewpoint of private persons whose speech it facilitates does not restrict the[State's] own speech, which is controlled by different principles. See, e.g., Board of Ed. of Westside Community Schools (Dist. 66) v. Mergens, 496 U.S. 226, 250 (1990); Hazelwood School Dist. v. Kuhlmeier, 484 U.S. 260, 270-72 (1988). Rosenberger, 515 U.S. at 833-34. Thus, the requirement of viewpoint neutrality, while essential to the analysis of a school's restrictions on extracurricular speech, such as that at issue in Rosenberger and Lamb's Chapel, is simply not applicable to restrictions on the State's own speech. Under Hazelwood, [e]ducators are entitled to exercise greater control over . . . student expression when it is elicited as part of a teachersupervised, school-sponsored activity. Hazelwood , 484 U.S. at 271. In that specific environment, viewpoint neutrality is neither necessary nor appropriate, as the school is there responsible for determin[ing] the content of the education it provides. Rosenberger, 515 U.S. at 833.2 _________________________________________________________________ 2. This conclusion is not inconsistent with Chandler v. James, No. 976898, 1999 WL 493495 (11th Cir. July 13, 1999). In Chandler, the Court held that the students' First Amendment right to freedom of expression was violated where students were barred from engaging in purely student-initiated, unsupervised, religious expression at school, such as prayer or other devotional speech at school-related assemblies, sporting events, or graduation ceremonies. The Chandler Court focused on the fact that the student speech at issue was purely student-initiated, and found that the speech is not the State's--either by attribution or by adoption. Id. at . Unlike Z.H.'s speech here, the student speech at issue in Chandler was clearly tolerated speech, triggering a higher level of scrutiny of the restrictions involved. Indeed, the Court's conclusion that the limitation was unconstitutional was expressly predicated on this fact, thereby distinguishing it from the case at bar. See id. at  (So long as school personnel do not participate in or actively supervise student-initiated speech, [the County School Board] cannot constitutionally prohibit students from speaking religiously. . . .). 12
We have no difficulty concluding that Ms. Oliva'sfirstgrade classroom was a non-public forum. There is no claim that the school invited the public, or any segment of the public, to use this forum for expressive activity. To the contrary, it was operated by the school exclusively for purposes of elementary education. While expressive activity was encouraged in this classroom, such expression was encouraged in the context of a supervised learning experience. Id. at 270. In this respect, the forum at issue here is analogous to that in Hazelwood, in which a schoolsponsored, student-run newspaper was held to be a nonpublic forum largely because the school retained control over the paper to ensure it was reserved for its intended [educational] purpose. Id.; see also Muller v. Jefferson Lighthouse Sch., 98 F.3d 1530, 1540 (7th Cir. 1996) (elementary school classroom was a nonpublic forum); Duran v. Nitsche, 780 F. Supp. 1048 (E.D. Pa. 1991) (same). We also have no difficulty concluding that Z.H.'s proposed story, like Spectrum, was a part of the school's curriculum and is appropriately characterized as promoted expression. It necessarily follows that the issue for decision is whether the decision to deny permission to readA Big Family to the class was reasonably related to a legitimate pedagogical concern. We conclude that it was.
We note at the outset that the decision maker here was the classroom teacher, Ms. Oliva. She was vested with the authority, unconstrained by school regulations, to determine the manner in which the classes should be conducted so as to best serve the educational mission of the school. This required her to exercise her discretion in light of all the circumstances she confronted. Her exercise of this discretion is entitled to substantial deference from this Court not only because she is a professional educator, but also because she is in a far better position than we to predict how students and their parents are likely to respond to the way she conducts her class in any given situation and what impact those responses may have on the ongoing educational process. 13 Z.H. wanted to read a story from The Beginner's Bible. If he were permitted to do so, it was reasonable to expect that other students might recognize that presentation as a story from the Bible. Even if Z.H. did not choose to expressly so inform his classmates, the title of the volume, the names of the characters and the clothing in which the characters were depicted in the illustrations could convey this message. To be sure, as plaintiff stresses, the content of the story was consistent with its being from a secular source. But the potential for Z.H.'s presentation being perceived by some of his classmates as a reading from the Bible clearly existed, and we believe a teacher in Ms. Oliva's position was entitled to take that fact into account. In determining whether Ms. Oliva's decision was reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns, the context is, of course, crucial. Ms. Oliva's was afirst-grade class. For children at this level, their teacher is a primary source of authority in their lives. They look to their teacher for signals of appropriate behavior. As a result, lessons that a first-grade teacher imparts to a class, or allows to be imparted in a classroom under her supervision, are likely to be understood as carrying her imprimatur. While older students may be able to distinguish messages a teacher specifically advocates from those she merely allows to be expressed in the classroom, most first graders cannot be counted on to make this nuanced distinction. We believe it was also an important part of the context of Ms. Oliva's decision that the classroom setting involved a religiously heterogeneous and captive audience. It is not unreasonable to expect that parents of non-Christian children would resent exposure of their six-year-old children to a reading from the Bible. Nor is it unreasonable to expect that some parents of Christian first graders would regard a compelled classroom exposure to material from the Bible as an infringement of their parental right to guide the religious development of their children at this stage. Moreover, it is not unreasonable to expect that any resentment engendered by Z.H.'s reading would have a significant adverse impact on the important relationship between the parents, the teacher, and their school. 14 It is most certainly true, as plaintiff emphasizes, that religion is an important part of the human experience and that no child's education can reasonably be regarded as complete without meaningful exposure to the variety of religious perspectives that he or she will encounter in the community and to the impact that religion has had in the development of civilization. For this reason, there are undoubtedly some contexts in which a school's foreclosure of student religious expression in a classroom will not be reasonably related to a legitimate pedagogical concern. The pedagogical issue presented by this case, however, is one of timing. Our holding is a narrow one: a first-grade publicschool teacher may reasonably conclude that the pedagogical detriment likely to flow from permitting what may be perceived as a reading of a Bible story in her classroom outweighs any pedagogical benefits.