Supreme Court Refuses "Ava Maria" Case

The Supreme Court has just refused to hear a case involving religious freedom. This time they affirmed the right not to be subjected to religion in a secular ceremony such as a high school graduation (because the right to religious freedom includes the right to be free from religion).

In 2006, a graduating senior, Kathryn Nurre, wanted to play the religious song "Ava Maria" with the school bands wind ensemble at her graduation. Members of the wind ensemble went to the school administration, and the school officials refused to allow Ms. Nurre to play the song.

The school did not want to be put in the position of allowing a christian song to be played at the secular event, where students, their families and their friends who may not be christians, or even religious at all, were to be in attendance. There was no point in going out of their way to offend anyone at what was supposed to be a happy and religion-free event.

But that wasn't good enough for the christian Nurre. She felt she had the right to subject everyone at the secular event to her own chosen religion. She sued the school district (in Everett, Washington), claiming they had violated her First Amendment rights.

Of course this was ridiculous. The school was not violating her rights, but their actions were meant to protect everyone's rights. It makes me wonder how Ms. Nurre would have acted if another student wanted to involve the muslim or hindu religion into the ceremony, or if a student wanted to give a speech extolling the virtues of atheism. Thankfully, the school district wouldn't have allowed those things either.

Her case was quickly kicked out of court. Her case was also denied by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The judges said it was reasonable for the school officials to ban a song that was obviously religious, and her rights had not been violated. It looks like a majority of justices on the Supreme Court agreed, because they refused to hear the case. Only one justice wanted to hear the case -- Samuel Alito (pictured).

Alito said, "A reasonable reading of the Ninth Circuit's decision is that it authorizes school administrators to ban any controversial student expression at any school event attended by parents because of the importance of the event for participating students. A decision with such potentially broad and troubling implications merits our review."

Alito must be an idiot. The decision did not authorize the banning of "any controversial student expression". It only authorized the school to ban religious expression from a secular school event with a captive audience, and that is constitutional. In fact, allowing religious expression in such a setting would have been unconstitutional.

I don't care if christians want to worship as they please. That is their right, and I have no desire to interfere with it. But they must understand that it is not their right to force their religion into a public secular event. To protect their own right to worship as they please, they must also support the right of others to worship differently or not at all.

Why is that so hard for some christians to understand?