High School Cheerleaders in Trouble for Bible Verse Banners

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by Alex

If the school were a private organization then that would be completely true.

But if the government (in the form of the public school) is going to bar speech based purely on the content of it (which is what is happening if they're told they can't write scripture but can write other things) then they need to have a reason beyond simple civility.

I go back and forth on this point. For example, what about an office of a government agency and its employees? At a private business, a manager definitely has the right to stop an employee from saying, "Jesus is our savior!" every time someone passes their cubical. If that's done at a government office (let's leave the public out of it, I'm talking about a cube-farm of government employees), is that government infringement of speech? Is that employee's manager an agent of the state censoring her? Or is the manager just someone trying to run an efficient operation? Are government offices barred from enforcing the types of workplace rules that are taken for granted within a private workplace, but would not be kosher for a cop to enforce on a public street, simply because it's a pubic institution?

A school is not an office, but it's close. As long as we're not talking about legal consequences, I don't have a problem with them enforcing certain restrictions on speech and behavior with the goal of creating a workable environment. And for the most part, considering that teachers are not routinely arrested on charges of false imprisonment for making students sit in a room for an hour, we all agree on that.

Yes, this is an edge case, and as I said earlier I don't consider it a major offense. But while the cheerleaders aren't being paid by the school and the message wasn't being produced by the school, the context is a football game that is being paid for by the school, and they are wearing uniforms representing their school. So I do think that sticks one little pinky toe over the line of being a representative of the school.