School District Did Not Violate Teacher’s Constitutional Rights When It Ordered Religious Banners Removed From His Classroom

In Johnson v. Poway Unified School District (658 F.3d 954, C.A.9 (Cal.), September 13, 2011)), the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit considered whether a California school district violated a teacher’s First Amendment rights by ordering him to remove banners from his classroom that contained references to “God” and the “Creator.”  The Ninth Circuit concluded the school district did not violate the teacher’s rights when it ordered him “not to use his public position as a pulpit from which to preach his own view on the role of God in our Nation’s history to captive students in his mathematics classroom.”

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Meghan Covert Russell