Mother sues Abington district over son’s Jesus costume

An Abington Township woman and her 10-year old son have sued the Abington School District, saying that the principal at the Willow Hill Elementary School there would not allow the boy to wear a Jesus costume, complete with a paper-and-twig crown of thorns, during a Halloween parade there last fall.

Instead, the suit says, he was told that he could wear only his white robe, without the crown, and should say he was a Roman emperor. The boy wanted to wear the costume to make a statement about his Christian beliefs and his opposition to the pagan aspects of Halloween, the suit says. Other children were allowed to dress as devils and goblins, the suit says.

The solicitor for the 7,500-student Montgomery County district says it did nothing wrong because the boy and his mother agreed after questions were raised by the school's principal that he could participate instead by portraying himself as a contemporary of Jesus', without the crown.

The lawsuit, filed Monday in the federal court for the eastern district of Pennsylvania, says that the district violated the free speech, religious expression and due process rights of the fourth-grade student, whom it refers to by his initials, E.D.T., and of his mother, Donna Brewer. E.D.T. has since left the district and is enrolled in a cyber charter school.

"They explicitly discriminated against Christianity," said Matt Bowman, a lawyer with the Alliance Defense Fund, which is representing E.D.T. and Brewer. "They attacked the right to free religious exercise. And they gave unbridled discretion to school officials to suppress free speech. Each of these has a long pedigree of Supreme Court cases that prohibit what the school officials did."

On its Web site, the Alliance Defense Fund says that its purpose is to "keep the door open for the spread of the Gospel through the legal defense and advocacy of religious freedom, the sanctity of human life, and traditional family values."

Abington district solicitor Ken Roos said the student was not discriminated against by any school officials. Instead, he said, when Patricia Whitmire, the principal at Willow Hill, raised questions about the boy's portraying himself as Jesus, he and his mother agreed that he would not wear the crown.

Roos said that all involved agreed that E.D.T. would present himself as someone from Jesus' era, not as a Roman emperor. "Ms. Brewer was there - she went along with this," Roos said. "The solution was what the folks at Willow Hill thought was OK with the mom. The principal was willing to go to central administration and clarify the question, but she never got the opportunity."

Roos also said that the district, which was the subject of a landmark 1963 Supreme Court Decision forbidding the reading of Bible verses to students by school officials, has an extensive policy on religion in public schools. "There is nothing in the board policy that would have prevented him, in a Jesus costume, from participating in the parade," he said.

Bowman, who said that Brewer would not comment directly on the suit, preferring to let her lawyers speak for her, said she never agreed to the proposed solution. In any case, he said, even to suggest it reflects "hostility to Christianity. . . . There is no other reason to suggest that the child remove the crown except to say that Jesus is banned from our school."

Bowman and the lawsuit also said that when Brewer asked for clarification on the district's stance toward Halloween costume restrictions, an assistant superintendent told her only that the district had a general policy against advocating religion and never got back to her with specifics.

Roos said that the assistant superintendent told her how she could get a copy of the religion policy but Brewer never did. Neither Brewer or the Alliance Defense Fund contacted the district after that, Roos said, except to file the lawsuit.

Public schools have long had the legal right to ban students wearing costumes that are "hateful or violent," said Charles Haynes, director of education programs at the First Amendment Center, a Virginia-based nonprofit that seeks to educate the public about the First Amendment and has long been involved in discussions with schools and religious groups about the role of religion in public schools.

"When the school allows other expressions [like devils or goblins] that could be seen as religious, then they cannot disallow a Christian expression. That's the most powerful argument here," he said. "A school allowing a variety of costumes cannot discriminate because they don't like a religious one; they can't censor a religious viewpoint."

Haynes added: "A lot of school districts have said there is no place at all for religion in the schools. That's wrong. . . . While school officials should not promote or denigrate religion, they can teach about it. And students have the right to express their religious beliefs; that can't be denied them."

This is not the first time the Alliance Defense Fund has taken legal action against a Philadelphia-area school district. Last spring, the group sued the Downingtown Area School District, saying that it did not allow student to express their Christian beliefs and their religious conviction that homosexuality is sinful. That suit was settled late last summer after the district changed its policies to allow the students to express their religious beliefs on school grounds, without admitting any wrongdoing.