{"id":14233,"date":"2013-06-22T15:40:18","date_gmt":"2013-06-22T19:40:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/?p=14233"},"modified":"2013-06-22T15:40:18","modified_gmt":"2013-06-22T19:40:18","slug":"teacher-who-punished-student-for-expressing-catholic-belief-against-homosexuality-violated-students-first-amendment-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/2013\/06\/teacher-who-punished-student-for-expressing-catholic-belief-against-homosexuality-violated-students-first-amendment-rights\/","title":{"rendered":"Teacher Who Punished Student for Expressing Catholic Belief Against Homosexuality Violated Student\u2019s First Amendment Rights"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, today announces a victory in their lawsuit against teacher Johnson McDowell of Howell High School in Howell, Michigan.\u00a0 Federal District Judge Patrick J. Duggan of the Eastern District of Michigan issued his opinion yesterday.<\/p>\n

The Court declared the teacher\u2019s actions in punishing Daniel Glowacki for expressing his beliefs against homosexuality violated \u201cDaniel\u2019s First Amendment rights.\u201d\u00a0 In its findings of fact\u2014the Court described how the teacher initiated a discussion about homosexuality.\u00a0 The teacher wore a purple t-shirt and was promoting the homosexual agenda.\u00a0 In response, the Plaintiff, 16 year-old Daniel Glowacki stated that homosexuality was against his Catholic beliefs.\u00a0 The teacher, admittedly, became angry and threw Daniel out of class because he disagreed with Daniel\u2019s beliefs.<\/p>\n

The teacher in the lawsuit tried to blame Daniel and claimed he caused a disturbance in the teacher\u2019s classroom.\u00a0 The teacher\u2019s claims were wholly unsupported by all of the other evidence in the case, including affidavits of students in the classroom and the teacher\u2019s own earlier statements.\u00a0 The teacher also tried to argue that Daniel\u2019s religious statement was tantamount to \u201cbullying.\u201d\u00a0 The Court dismissed that claim as well, holding that Daniel\u2019s speech could not be silenced because the teacher did not like Daniel\u2019s religious beliefs and viewpoint.<\/p>\n

The Court\u2019s opinion echoed the longstanding legal precedent that \u201cstudents do not shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.\u201d\u00a0 Tinker v. Des Moines Indep. Cmty. Sch. Dist.<\/em>, 393 U.S. 503, 506 (1969).<\/p>\n

The teacher argued that Daniel\u2019s speech that his religion did not approve of homosexuality was a bullying statement.\u00a0 However, Judge Duggan, citing several cases, disagreed (citations and quotations omitted).<\/p>\n

While the Court certainly recognizes that schools are empowered to regulate speech to prevent students from invading the rights of other students, people do not have a legal right to prevent criticism of their beliefs or for that matter their way of life.\u00a0 Relatedly, a listeners\u2019 reaction to speech is not a content-neutral basis for regulation.\u00a0 While a student or perhaps several students may have been upset or offended by Daniel\u2019s remarks, _Tinker _straight-forwardly tells us that, in order for school officials to justify prohibition of a particular expression of opinion, they must be able to show that this action was caused by something more than a mere desire to avoid the discomfort and unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular viewpoint. Simply put, the law does not establish a generalized hurt feelings defense to a high school\u2019s violation of the First Amendment rights of its students.<\/p>\n

\u2026 (source)<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Good news considering how often religious freedom takes a hit. With today being the start of the second phase of the Fortnight for Freedom<\/a> it nice to have at least some positive news. Being an optimistic-pessimist I will take what I can get. Still I only see an increase in this type of persecution and bigotry towards faithful Catholics and generally those enlightened by the natural law concerning this. Although I suspect this small bit of good news will be overwhelmed when the Supreme Court rules on DOMA and Prop 8.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, today announces a victory in their lawsuit against teacher Johnson McDowell of Howell High…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-punditry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14233\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}