Lenoir City High School in Tennessee apparently has a real First Amendment problem on its hands. It has refused to allow the school newspaper to print an article by the editor of that paper that dealt with anti-atheist bigotry and the school’s pervasive Christian atmosphere.
Krystal Myers is an honors student, captain of the swim team and editor of her high school newspaper.
She’s also an atheist in a predominantly Christian student body.
In a recent editorial that Myers, 18, intended for the Lenoir City High School newspaper entitled “No Rights: The Life of an Atheist,” she questioned her treatment by the majority.
“Why does atheism have such a bad reputation? Why do we not have the same rights as Christians?” she wrote.
Myers’ editorial also accused school administrators, teachers and coaches of violating the constitution by promoting “pro-Christian” beliefs during school-sponsored events…
Schools Director Wayne Miller said it was the decision of the school authorities not to allow publication of Myers’ editorial because of the potential for disruption in the school.
“We do have the right to control the content of the school paper if we feel it is in the best interest of the students,” he said.
Sounds like a dishonest pretext to me. Do they have any actual evidence of such disruption? Or by “disruption” do they just mean that it might cause people to disagree with one another and disagree with the school? I hope the ACLU gets involved here. A subpoena for all the communications between administrators discussing the situation might reveal a great deal.
As to the constitutional violations alleged by Myers, Miller said he is comfortable the school system is on the right side of the law. Prayers at athletic events are student-led. School board meetings do begin with a prayer, but there are usually no students present, he said.
According to a 1999 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruling, Cleveland School Board vs. Coles, school boards are not allowed to conduct prayer services during board meetings, Haynes said.
Myers gives other examples in Lenoir City of what she believes are constitutional violations, including T-shirts worn by a teacher that depict the crucifix and a “Quote of the day” that teachers write on the boards in the classroom.
The quotes often include Bible verses, she said.
Lenoir, you have a problem. And you just made that problem bigger. The comments on the article are pretty much exactly what you would expect. This is my favorite:
It’s pretty simple. No matter what I believe, if it is not allowed, it is not allowed. Why should atheists get more privileges than any other? If we can’t have prayer in schools, and allow them to practice what they want, why should any other have the privilege? This is the problem with atheists today. They don’t want anything pushed on them, yet they try to push their non-belief on others. It’s the same as reverse racism.
Mind-boggling. You can read the student’s full submission here.
Update: Unfortunately, it looks like the young lady has no interest in raising a stink over it. In fact, she thinks the school is in the right despite the censorship. That’s too bad. Students need to stand up for their rights more often.
14 comments
Skip to comment form ↓
dingojack
February 24, 2012 at 10:24 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I await the fervid messages (from certain posters) claiming any disruptions would be caused by ‘No True Christians’* or that ‘I’ve never heard christians say X’ (despite the mountian of contrary evidence)**.
And another poster claiming something along the lines of ‘Muslims are worse (and they started it!)’***
@@
Dingo
—–
* or in some cases ‘No True Humans’
** the ‘No Snow’ arguement
*** because threats of beheading are evuuul. However, harassment, death threats and fire-bombings are just peachy (just as long as the ‘our’ kind of religious extremist does it to ‘them’).
peterh
February 24, 2012 at 10:59 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“If we can’t have prayer in schools, and allow them to practice what they want, why should any other have the privilege? This is the problem with atheists today. They don’t want anything pushed on them, yet they try to push their non-belief on others.”
Just how is it the presence of one thing and the absence of another are equivalent?
Chiroptera
February 24, 2012 at 11:04 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
From the linked article: “I feel like it should be able to be censored because some topics just don’t need to be talked about or written in a school, and I’m sure you can think of which topics and things like that, and so, I think that there should be a little bit of government around there,” she said.
Few people dispute that some things need to be censored. It’s just that the just grounds for censorship are very, very narrow. In the case of a public school newpaper, the grounds may be a bit wider, there are still limits as to what can be acceptably censored.
Just because some things might need to be censored doesn’t mean that we give the state (or its agents) broad powers to determine whether anything at all may be censored. Just like just because we can think of one bad thing happening in some circumstance doesn’t justify overly broad laws that outlaw an entire class of behaviors.
unbound
February 24, 2012 at 11:24 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Unfortunately, it looks like the young lady has no interest in raising a stink over it.”
Considering what has happened to Jessica Ahlquist, I’m not sure I can blame Krystal. That is absolutely enormous pressure for a teenager to have to deal with. Props to Jessica for weathering it, but I can absolutely understand adults (much less a teenager) backing down under those circumstances.
matty1
February 24, 2012 at 11:30 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
At the risk of being flamed I think the student is factually correct in her position, which I understand as something like.
It was a bad decision but free speech can’t mean an obligation for publishers to publish everything that is submitted so they were within their rights.
Markita Lynda--Happy Darwin's Birthday!
February 24, 2012 at 12:00 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The school seems to have exercised a double standard, printing opinion piece that praise religion but denying a non-religious opinion that does not promote atheism but talks about how atheists are treated in their school and enumerates violations of the constitution by the school. Those are testable statements about what goes on in the school. Apparently, they don’t want their violations to be noted nor to have to correct their infractions.
Markita Lynda--Happy Darwin's Birthday!
February 24, 2012 at 12:02 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I do hope that a member of the public starts attending school board meetings with a video recorder.
d cwilson
February 24, 2012 at 12:06 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@matty1:
I think the school district may have the law on their side with respect to the decision not to publish the editorial. If the school were disciplining her for something she wrote on her private blog, that would be one thing. But a student newspaper is not an independent publication. It is part of the school and freedom of the press belongs to the owner of the press. The NY Times isn’t legally obligated to publish every letter to the editor that they receive. They’re not even obligated to publish everything their employees write.
That’s not to say that the school might have other problems with the establishment clause. In particular, the posting of bible verses in the classroom and beginning school board meetings with a prayer sound like a government endorsement of a particular religion to me.
The Lorax
February 24, 2012 at 12:34 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I agree that the school is within its right to not publish the article, I agree that Krystal made the safe decision to not push the issue.
Unfortunately, neither of those things matter anymore. Streisand Effect, anyone? This story, and Krystal’s article, have leaked into the Internets, and now everyone knows about what’s going on. Assuming Krystal reported the facts in her article, everyone now knows that the school is promoting unconstitutional activities. Regardless of the right to publish an article or to retaliate against it not being published, the information has now gotten out, and the issues which prompted it in the first place are more important.
I hope the ACLU takes a good long look at this.
Chris from Europe
February 24, 2012 at 4:01 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The ACLU should also look if there aren’t other cases against the school. I doubt that the kind of people behind such a decision are able not to make mistakes exposing them.
Chiroptera
February 24, 2012 at 4:44 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
d cwilson, #*: But a student newspaper is not an independent publication. It is part of the school and freedom of the press belongs to the owner of the press.
In this case, though, the owner of this particular press is an agent of the state. That places certain limitations on what it can and cannot do. For example, the NY Times can decide to devote an entire page to Bible study, similar to the Christian Science Monitor. A public school newspaper cannot.
I am not a lawyer, but my understanding is that if the school has allowed the editorial page of the paper (this is another illustration — I’m not saying that this is the case in this particular situation) as an open forum with broad latitude as to what is allowed to be published, then the school has limited its “right” to limit what may or may not be published.
It is my understanding — perhaps erroneous, so someone may correct me — that ultimately the test is whether a “reasonable person who understands all the facts of the case,” including the general editorial policies of the paper and what has been allowed to be published in the recent past, could conclude that these views were being censored because of their religious nature.
macallan
February 24, 2012 at 9:33 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
So she wrote an editorial complaining about bad treatment of atheists and the accused rush in to prove her right.
Michael Heath
February 24, 2012 at 10:20 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
To those arguing the school had a right not to publish this piece, I respond with bullshit. There is zero evidence of any risk of disruption that would out-compete the right of this student being denied her rights.
The student was also editor of the newspaper, a paper which had already published pieces promoting religion, which increases the obligation the school had to protect the rights of those who didn’t agree with the previous articles. And school administrators don’t have rights when acting in their capacity as the government, they instead have powers and obligations. Where the power to deny such articles has not been delegated while they also have a constitutional obligation to defend the speech, press, and individual religious freedom rights of each of their students – individually.
caseloweraz
February 25, 2012 at 3:08 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I agree that the excuse of “disruption” is thin, and their refusal to publish the editorial is certainly misguided.
However, as I recall school administrators have broader discretion under law in such cases than the publisher of a regular newspaper. IIRC the case of “Bong hits for Jesus” went down that way.
As noted, there’s also the factor of peer pressure. Krystal Myers, being captain of the swim team, probably has more reason to give that priority than, say, Jessica Alquist.