The Rutherford Institute is taking another school free-speech case to the Supreme Court.
The Everett School District in Washington State would not allow students in an instrumental ensemble to play “Ave Maria” at their high school graduation. The Rutherford Institute founder John Whitehead picks up the story.
“The ‘Ave Maria’ that they chose is not the one we all know. It’s the one by France Babel, which is unrecognizable. There were no lyrics and no words,” he recounts. “When school officials found out that the wind ensemble, which is a group of students, had chosen ‘Ave Maria,’ they thought it was too religious and they banned it and said that they couldn’t play it at the graduation ceremony.”
Senior and wind ensemble member Kathryn Nurre contacted The Rutherford Institute, which tnen became involved in the skirmish.
“We filed a lawsuit on her behalf. The case lost in the lower courts, and now an appeals court has ruled that basically if someone is offended, it’s reasonable for a school basically to ban religious material or anything that might offend someone,” the attorney explains. “So it’s basically a political correctness rule.”
Whitehead adds that the “case is a perfect example of the extremes to which school officials will go in their efforts to sanitize our nation’s public schools of anything even remotely related to religion.”
(Source: Onenewsnow)