Bible Club Students Sue Their School: What you should know

Feb 1, 2019 | 0 comments

Student leaders of a Bible club have filed a lawsuit against Mechanicsburg Area School District (MASD) over unconstitutional policies that violate students’ rights and for their discriminatory practices that led to denying permission to offer Bibles during non instructional times, specifically from a table during lunch.

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The Lawsuit

“MASD has taken away student speech rights in the school and even seeks to regulate their speech rights during non-school hours on public sidewalks that every member of the general public possesses.” Click here for the filed lawsuit.

FAQ with Timeline of Events

When students enter a government school, they do not shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression, which includes offering literature to other students. However, Mechanicsburg Area School District (MASD) policies relegate student distribution of literature, quite literally, to outside the schoolhouse gate and outside of the school day. Click here for more.

Press Release – Independence Law Center

The Bible club requested permission to set up a table at lunch for students to sign a poster saying what they were thankful for and then to offer those students a Bible. The table and thankfulness poster were approved, but the request to offer Bibles from the table was denied by the principal. Click here for full press release.

“Despite what the school district has later said, the students requested permission to share Bibles at lunch and were explicitly denied the ability to do so by the principal,” says Randall Wenger, Chief Counsel for the Independence Law Center. “The principal by email told the students they are ‘not permitted to handout Bibles during the school day[,]” which itself is unconstitutional.”

Jeremy Samek: “This is for all the students.” (VIDEO)

Jeremy Samek addresses the MASD Board Members (VIDEO)

School Censoring Religious Truth Claims (VIDEO)