Step One: Student-Delivered Legal Docs "Bible Clubs are Allowed"

The quest for justice begins at Pinole Valley High School, with the president of the SWAT hand-delivering legal documents containing the legal precedences below in their entirety.  What you'll read is only bits and pieces of the actual seven-page document. 

Mergens, 496 U.S. at 244-45 (quoting Mergens v. Westside Community Schools, 876 F.2d 1076, 1078 (8th Cir. 1989) content courtesy of ACLJ.org

"Schools may not discriminate against any students who wish to conduct a meeting ... on the basis of religious, political, philosophical, or other content of the speech at such meetings... If a state refused to let religious groups use the facilities open to others, then it would demonstrate not neutrality but hostility toward religion.  The Establishment Clause does not license governemt to treat religion and those who teach or practice it, simply by virtue of their status as such, as subversive of American ideals and therefore subject to unique disabilities..."

The Supreme Court held that student-initiated Bible Clubs of Prayer Groups must be given official recognition on campus in order to satisfy the requirements of the Equal Access Act.  Official recognition means that Bible Clubs of Prayer Groups must be treated the same as other club meeting on the campus. Same treatment means equal access to the same media produced to advertise the club, including school newspapers etc... participation in the annual Club Day festival, permission to post fliers and posters in like manner as other clubs including the right to reference Christianity on all printed media. 

It is important to note that the "right to persuade or advocate a religious viewpoint implicates the very reason the First Amendment was adopted."  And in Tinker v. Des Moines ISD, 393 U.S. at 506, the Supreme Court held that "it can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."  This simply means that school administration can only prohibit student speech if it "materially and substantially interferes with appropriate discipline."

In any light, the rights of religious persons to express their views publicly have been reinforced many times. The situation at Pinole Valley, as was made by the principal, was again based on her unfounded fear that the Muslims and satanic churches would be able to start a club. Which is, of course, their constitutional right. Being the thriving community of students that PVHS is with so many clubs, the only request of your students is that none of them are marginalized or discriminated upon by their princiPAL.

Ms. Kahn, what is at stake is far more than 25 or so kids meeting in a classroom at lunch time, but the rights of American students everywhere.  As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "a threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

Stay posted for the next step.  We'll give Principal Kahn until the 19th of January to meet our request of allowing the SWAT club to regain full access club rights on campus.  Fighting the good fight with so many good people -Corey