Title: The First Amendment in Schools: Resource Guide: Religious Expression in the Public Schools - National Coalition Against Censorship
Headings: The First Amendment in Schools: Resource Guide: Religious Expression in the Public Schools
The First Amendment in Schools: Resource Guide: Religious Expression in the Public Schools
Content: Web Pages, Dress Codes, and More | Access to Information on the Internet | Teachers’ Rights | Parents’ Rights
The First Amendment guarantees of religious liberty include the freedom to believe or not to believe, and to observe one’s faith openly without government interference. Freedom of speech encompasses religious as well as secular speech, but the Establishment Clause imposes limitations on government endorsement of religion that has important implications for religious speech and observance in public schools. Thomas Jefferson described the Establishment Clause as erecting “a wall of separation between church and state.” Government neutrality toward religion is increasingly important with the proliferation of diverse religious beliefs, and schools are among the most important places where this principle is tested. Public school teachers, principals, administrators, and other personnel may not: promote a particular religion as being superior to any other,
promote religion in general as superior to a secular approach to life,
be antagonistic to religion in general or to a particular religious belief in particular
be antagonistic to secularism, or
do things to advance or inhibit religion. This does not imply that the public schools may not teach about religion. Indeed, “the Bible may constitutionally be used in an appropriate study of history, civilization, ethics, comparative religion, and the like.” Stone v. Graham, 449 U.S. 39, 42 (1980) (per curiam). Schools may teach about religion, explain the tenets of various faiths, discuss the role of religion in history, literature, science and other endeavors, and the like, as long as it has a secular purpose to promote educational goals, and there is no effort to promote or inhibit any religious belief.