Source: The First Amendment Center
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=20654
For the third time, a federal judge has rejected a lawsuit over a kindergartner’s religious-themed poster, ruling New York school officials didn’t violate the First Amendment by censoring the boy’s work.
The nearly decade-long dispute began in 1999 at Catherine McNamara Elementary School in New York when teacher Susan Weickert assigned her class the project of creating posters relating to something they had learned in class about the environment. The class sought to teach students how to take care of the environment. For the assignment, student Antonio Peck initially created a poster full of religious imagery with the statement, “The only way to save our world.” His poster depicted the Ten Commandments and Jesus and made numerous other religious references.
Weickert thought that the poster didn’t deal with anything she had taught in class and might have created the impression that she was teaching religion in her classroom. She consulted school Principal Robert Creme, who agreed that the poster should not be displayed and that Antonio should redo it.
Antonio made a second poster showing children in front of a church throwing away trash. It included a picture of Jesus kneeling with his hands lifted upward. School officials allowed this poster to be displayed but folded back the part of the poster that showed Jesus.
Peck, through his parents JoAnne and Kenley, sued the school district, the principal and school superintendent in federal court, alleging numerous constitutional violations, including free-speech and establishment-clause claims. The free-speech claim contended that school officials censored Antonio’s posters because of the religious viewpoints they conveyed.