Author's note: This interview is part one in a series based on my interview with Richard Thompson, president and general counsel of the Thomas More Law Center, an organization dedicated to providing legal representation without charge to defend and protect Christians and their religious beliefs in the public square .
Imagine a public school teacher telling his/her students, "For the next few weeks, you're all going to become Christians." Imagine that students had to wear crosses, memorize Christian prayers and recite them, memorize Christian concepts of the Eucharist and celebrate them, fast during Lent and chant "Jesus is the Messiah!" How long would it take for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to file a lawsuit? A week? A day? A minute? As we've seen many times, it would be immediate and very expensive for the school district, which, when it lost, would be forced to pay huge legal fees to the ACLU.
In 2000, a seventh grade teacher in California's Byron Union School District (about fifty miles east of San Francisco) forced her seventh-grade students to become Muslims for three weeks. Students had to wear a star and crescent, memorize Muslim prayers, verses and the five pillars of faith, fast during lunch period as if it were Ramadan, chant "Allah Akbar!" and play a dice game called "jihad," which was defined for students as a "struggle against oppression." What did the ACLU have to say about this? Nothing. Not a peep. Christian parents were outraged and filed a lawsuit in federal court against the school with the assistance of the Thomas More Law Center.
I had a chance to interview Richard Thompson, president and general counsel for the Thomas More Law Center last week. The lawsuit against Byron Union School District was one of the earliest to call attention to increasing Muslim influence in our public schools. He said, "[T]he judge dismissed the case saying, well this was a typical educational program. The activities were not overtly religious, that would raise any 'establishment clause' concerns. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that dismissal in a non-published opinion."
"Non-published?" I asked. "Is that typical?"
"No," he said. "And this was a very neat trick that they pulled. Because it was non-published – at the time, the rule was that any non-published opinion could not be used as precedent. So what they basically did was, give the Byron Union School District a pass on the fact that they were in fact involved in overtly religious education. But it would not be used as a precedent so that Christians could say, okay, well you've done it for the Muslims – now we're going to be able do it for Christians. That was our first involvement in a school – a public school – overtly promoting the religious faith of Muslims."
The case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court which, last October, declined to intervene.
I asked then if there were any other cases of this
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