Students at Cumberland County High School are fighting against what they say is the local Pennsylvania school district’s unconstitutional ban on distributing Bibles on campus.
The students allege that David Harris, the high school’s principal, told members of the Christians in Action Student Club that they were not allowed to pass out Bibles to their friends during lunchtime and that if they wanted to pass out Bibles after the school day, they would have to get approval from the school administration. The students then asked Jeremy Samek, Independence Law Center senior counsel, to help them challenge Mechanicsburg Area School District’s “Bible ban” and appeal to administrators to lift it. (RELATED: California Lawmakers Consider A Bill That Would Ban The Bible)
“For some reason they believe that in order to avoid an establishment clause violation, they mistakenly believe they need to treat religion like it’s toxic, and they need to eliminate it from public school wherever they find it,” Samek said, according to PennLive. “When you start doing that, you move from protecting the establishment clause to violating the free speech right of students.”
