Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, November 28, 1995 TAG: 9511280134
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The justices, without comment, turned away Brittney Kaye Settle's argument that her teacher's decision to disallow a paper on Jesus violated her free-speech rights.
Settle's 1991 lawsuit had been thrown out by a federal judge, and the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal last May.
Settle, who now is out of high school, was attending a junior high school in Dickson, Tenn., in 1991 when teacher Dana Ramsey assigned the ninth-grade English class the task of choosing a topic and writing a short research paper.
When Settle submitted an outline for a paper titled ``The Life of Jesus Christ,'' Ramsey told her to choose another topic.
When Settle persisted and handed in her paper on that topic, she received a grade of zero.
Settle sued for damages and to have the zero removed from her academic record.
During the litigation, Ramsey explained that she refused to allow Settle to write about Jesus for several reasons. She said she knew Settle had a strong personal belief in Christianity that would make it difficult for her to write a dispassionate research paper.
And she said grading such a paper might present problems because remarks about grammar or organization might be misinterpreted as criticism of Settle's religious beliefs.
Ramsey also said Settle already knew much about the subject and that part of the assignment's purpose was to have the students research a topic unfamiliar to them.
In its decision, the 6th Circuit noted that Settle's personal expression was not at issue because the dispute involved part of the school's curriculum.
The appeals court relied on a 1988 Supreme Court decision that gave officials broad control over student speech in school-sponsored activities such as student newspapers ``so long as their actions are reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns.''
The appeals court added: ``Teachers, therefore, must be given broad discretion to give grades and conduct class discussion based on the content of speech. Learning is more vital in the classroom than free speech.''
``This case is about viewpoint discrimination,'' Settle's lawyers argued in seeking high court review.
They said the appeals court's ruling ``upholds viewpoint-based censorship of student expression involving particular religious traditions ... on the theory that such censorship lies within the discretion of school officials.''
In other matters Monday, the court:
Refused to free five anti-abortion demonstrators from paying nearly $100,000 in attorney fees to an abortion clinic they targeted. In the Sacramento, Calif., case, the justices let stand rulings that said the attorney-fee award against the abortion protesters did not violate or wrongly ``chill'' their free-speech rights.
Refused to revive an Alabama lawsuit that accused the South's timber industry of illegal racial bias in barring blacks from certain jobs.
Turned away arguments aimed at limiting the scope of a second trial for a former Hare Krishna leader accused of using murder, kidnapping and fraud to protect a multimillion-dollar criminal enterprise - the religious community he founded in West Virginia.
by CNB