Steve Jamar is absolutely right, and the Texas Supreme Court is quite wrong. Cheers uttered, and banners carried, by cheerleaders during a public high school football game are school sponsored speech. Does anyone on the list think the First Amendment would bar the school from ordering cheerleaders not to carry a sign that said "Feel the Bern -- beat Austin HS!"? The school is responsible for the content of these banners, and a school sponsored banner that reads "“I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me,” as one of them did, is a violation of the Establishment Clause.
On Sat, Jan 30, 2016 at 11:42 AM, Steven Jamar <stevenja...@gmail.com> wrote: > Seems to me there is an establishment problem here. Cheerleaders are > sponsored by the school and are displaying religious messages to a captive > audience who could choose to forego attending the game or else putting up > with the religious banners. > > Has the free speech approach become so dominant that stopping such > displays becomes content-based discrimination and avoiding establishing > religion doesn’t meet strict scrutiny as a reason to infringe on such > speech? > > > https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/texas-top-court-sides-with-cheerleaders-in-bible-banner-suit/2016/01/29/0939bbce-c6b7-11e5-b933-31c93021392a_story.html > -- > Prof. Steven D. Jamar > Howard University School of Law > vox: 202-806-8017 > fax: 202-806-8567 > http://sdjlaw.org > > Two quotes from Louis Armstrong: > "You blows who you is." > "If ya ain't got it in ya, ya can't blow it out." > > > _______________________________________________ > To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu > To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see > http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw > > Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as > private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are > posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or > wrongly) forward the messages to others. > -- Ira C. Lupu F. Elwood & Eleanor Davis Professor of Law, Emeritus George Washington University Law School 2000 H St., NW Washington, DC 20052 (202)994-7053 Co-author (with Professor Robert Tuttle) of "Secular Government, Religious People" ( Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2014)) My SSRN papers are here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=181272#reg
_______________________________________________ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
