A United States federal court has ruled that a Georgia school district is legally mandated to reinstate a religious release-time programme for public school students while a lawsuit is litigated.
According to advocacy group, The Alliance Defending Freedom, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia ruled Vidalia City Schools must reinstate The Sweet Onion Christian Learning Center while litigation continues.
The ADF, which provided legal counsel to the center and its director, Gady Youmans, said that its attorneys filed a suit earlier this year against Vidalia City Schools after they punished him for exercising his First Amendment freedom of speech. They have alleged that they discontinued the decade-long programme because of a post criticising a proposed tax increase in the school district, on Facebook last September.` Youmans commented that school board members do not need more funds.
“The office keeps hiring admins we don’t need with near $100,000 salaries,” he claimed
Five months later, Youmans was informed that the school district would no longer offer the released-time programme beginning in the next school year.
The ADF also alleges that after learning about Youmans’ Facebook posts, the superintendent of Vidalia City Schools, Sandy Reid, secretly investigated Sweet Onion and learned that, six years ago, a parent from another school had removed her child from a Sweet Onion course after learning the ministry did not exclusively employ her interpretation of the Bible. Reid then reported to the Vidalia City Board of Education that, in addition to her disagreement with the content of Youmans’ Facebook posts, his instruction “reflected a particular interpretation of the Bible” that wasn’t presented in a “neutral or well-balanced manner.” In this attack on his religious instruction, the district violated Youmans’ right to the free exercise of religion.
ADF Legal Counsel Mercer Martin, who spoke on Youmans’ behalf said that every citizen has the right to publicly criticize the government, and that the Vidalia City Schools cannot punish Rev. Youmans for simply sharing his opinions.
“Every American has the right to publicly criticize the government—that’s what makes the First Amendment guarantee of free speech so special and the envy of the world,” said Martin. “Vidalia city schools can’t punish Rev. Youmans—or his ministry providing high school students with free religious education—for simply sharing his opinion of a proposed tax hike. We are urging the court to reinstate Sweet Onion’s released-time programme and restore Rev. Youmans’ constitutional freedoms.”
