Judge: No Reason to Censor Religious Books
A federal judge’s decision to dismiss a lawsuit challenging the Idaho Public Charter School Commission’s ban on the use of religious texts in its curriculum may not be the last word.
The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) represented Nampa Classical Academy in Idaho after the state’s charter commission threatened to revoke the Academy’s license if it used the Bible or other religious books on its classroom resource list.
Now that a judge has upheld the ban, ADF is considering the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals as an option.
“There is no legitimate educational reason to censor such amount of large religious books just because they’re religious,” contends ADF attorney Brian Cortman. “Imagine taking any category of literature and just banning it from the public schools. There would be such an outcry, especially on the left. Yet what’s interesting in this case [is] groups like the ACLU and Americans United [for Separation of Church and State] have come out in opposition to us and in fact are issuing statements and blogs supporting this ban, which I think shows the double standard that they employ.”
By including the Bible and other religious writings in the curriculum, the ADF attorney argues that the charter school is endeavoring to exercise its right to provide the best possible education for its students.
He further points out that “the Supreme Court has already ruled for the last several decades that it’s permissible to teach the Bible as history…literature, or for Western civilization, yet this opinion conflicts with that.”
(Source: OneNewsNow)
