Opinion ID: 1318757
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: the permissible reach of ors 342.650

Text: A court's obligation before invalidating a textually overbroad statute is to see whether it can be interpreted so as to save the legislative purpose as far as the constitution permits, leaving only marginal instances of potentially unconstitutional application to case-by-case decision. State v. Moyle, 299 Or. 691, 702, 705 P.2d 740 (1985). The Court of Appeals recognized the need to limit the potential reach of ORS 342.650. Compliance with the statute demands some sacrifice of religious self-expression by a teacher. The statute, of course, does not forbid the wearing of religious dress outright, but it does forbid doing so while teaching. The law could be described either as denying a teacher's right to practice her religion or as denying a person demonstratively committed to a religious vocation the opportunity to teach in the public schools. The two descriptions may invite different responses, but the issue should not hinge on semantics. To forbid a teacher to disclose personal views that are identified as such and not attributed to the school, including religious views, involves issues of free speech as well as religion. A program hermetically sealed to exclude all controversy and potentially offensive ideas can hardly be defended as education for the world beyond the classroom. Teachers as well as students have been held free to express their objection to national policy symbolically by their dress. [21] A distinction between privileged personal expression and forbidden indoctrination or proselytizing is easier to assert than to apply; one teacher's personal views and acts can carry more unintended persuasion than another's most determined teaching efforts. Yet if Janet Cooper on December 6, 1983, only had told her class that she had changed her name because she became a Sikh and what this meant, the school district could hardly have discharged her in order to protect her pupils against religious proselytizing. To disqualify her from teaching under ORS 342.650 for dressing as a Sikh one must find greater significance in the forbidden religious dress than in the verbal religious self-identification. The Court of Appeals stated this greater significance as follows: We therefore construe the term `religious dress' to mean clothing that is associated with, and symbolic of, religion. To be symbolic, the clothes must communicate the wearer's adherence to a particular religion. We construe `while in the performance of his duties as a teacher' to include only those duties which systematically bring the teacher, as a teacher, into contact with students. (Footnote omitted). 76 Or.App. at 150-51, 708 P.2d 1161. We agree with this interpretation as far as it goes, but more needs to be added. The quoted paragraph correctly recognizes that religious dress must be judged from the perspective both of the wearer and of the observer, that it is dress which is worn by reason of its religious importance to the teacher and also conveys to children of the age, background, and sophistication typical of students in the teacher's class a degree of religious commitment beyond the choice to wear common decorations that a person might draw from a religious heritage, such as a necklace with a small cross or Star of David. A teacher does not violate the statute by wearing a garment or a color that unintentionally happens to imply membership in some religious group, nor, for instance, by dressing in clerical garb to assume a role in a classroom historical exercise or a performance of, say, George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan. The quoted formulation also recognizes that the performance of his duties as a teacher does not include everything that a teacher is paid to do and every hour during which he does it. Under the principles already discussed, the phrase must be confined to those circumstances when a teacher's dressing in accordance with the standards of his or her religion is truly incompatible with the school's commitment to maintaining for its students the atmosphere of religious freedom and neutrality that is the objective of ORS 342.650. This means appearing in religious dress while dealing directly with children in a teaching or counseling role. The additional element not stated in the opinion of the Court of Appeals is the continual or frequent repetition of a teacher's appearance in specifically religious (not merely ethnic) dress. The religious influence on children while in the public school that laws like ORS 342.650, in their concern with the employment of nuns wearing their special garb as public school teachers, legitimately seek to prevent is not the mere knowledge that a teacher is an adherent of a particular religion. Their concern is that the teacher's appearance in religious garb may leave a conscious or unconscious impression among young people and their parents that the school endorses the particular religious commitment of the person whom it has assigned the public role of teacher. This is what makes the otherwise privileged display of a teacher's religious commitment by her dress incompatible with the atmosphere of religious neutrality that ORS 342.650 aims to preserve, or so the school authorities may decide. The statute therefore would not be violated whenever a teacher makes an occasional appearance in religious dress, for instance on her way to or from a seasonal ceremony. It is the same distinction as that between an occasional religious meeting, parade or brief display in a public park or building and the permanent erection of a religious symbol, as in Lowe v. City of Eugene, supra . Only wearing religious dress as a regular or frequently repeated practice while teaching is grounds for disqualification.