The Freedom From Religion Foundation has filed a friend-of-the-court brief defending a Connecticut school district’s ability to prevent teachers from religious classroom displays.
The case before the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals involving the Consolidated School District of New Britain centers around a crucifix hung on a classroom wall by middle school teacher Marisol Arroyo-Castro. The crucifix was placed in plain view of Arroyo-Castro’s students and among relevant classroom displays, such as computer operation instructions, a student daily schedule, and a poster for a social studies textbook. When the district asked her to remove the crucifix from the classroom wall and move it to a location where it would not be visible to students, Arroyo-Castro refused. After trying to work with Arroyo-Castro to find a suitable accommodation, the district issued a letter of reprimand and then a two-day suspension. The district ultimately placed Arroyo-Castro on paid administrative leave due to her insistence upon leaving the crucifix in a visible location on her classroom wall. She then filed suit in the Connecticut Federal District Court, arguing that the district’s request to remove the crucifix violated her First Amendment Free Speech and Free Exercise rights.
In her opinion denying Arroyo-Castro’s motion for a preliminary injunction against the district, Judge Sarah F. Russell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut applied the Supreme Court’s Garcetti test to Arroyo-Castro’s Free Speech claim. The “Garcetti test” is what courts use to determine if a government employee’s Free Speech rights are violated. Under the test, the district court said that Arroyo-Castro was not entitled to Free Speech protection because the display of the crucifix on her classroom wall was speech made as part of her official duties as a government employee.
The district court also applied the Garcetti framework to Arroyo-Castro’s Free Exercise claim.
“Ms. Castro’s Free Exercise and Free Speech claims fully overlap in the sense that the religious exercise that Ms. Castro says is infringed is necessarily communicative,” the judge wrote. “Under these circumstances, the Free Exercise Clause does not compel the district to communicate a religious message.”
FFRF’s brief argues that the district court correctly applied Garcetti’s official duties test to Arroyo-Castro’s Free Exercise challenge. The Court of Appeals shouldn’t grant government employees, including public school teachers, carte blanche to say, do or display anything they want on government property so long as it’s in the name of their religion.
“Speech does not cease to be speech simply because its topic concerns religion,” the brief reads. “To apply the ‘official duties’ test to Arroyo-Castro’s Free Speech claim and not her Free Exercise claim would allow subversion of this doctrine if — and only if — the speech in question is religious.”
Should the 2nd Circuit decline to apply Garcetti to the Free Exercise claim, FFRF points out the dangerous precedent that ruling would set: “Under such a rule, a teacher would be permitted to tell their students that Muhammad is the one true prophet or that they should fast during Ramadan, but could be fired for sharing who she thinks is the best political candidate in an upcoming election.”
“This is a straightforward case,” says FFRF Senior Litigation Counsel Sam Grover. “The school district, not Arroyo-Castro, gets to decide what messages are communicated on classroom walls. Arroyo-Castro should lose simply because she wants to promote her personal religious beliefs on government property. No teacher has that right.”
FFRF Anne Nicol Gaylor Legal Fellow Kyle Steinberg drafted FFRF’s brief and Senior Litigation Counsel Sam Grover served as Counsel of Record.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with about 41,000 members nationwide, including nearly 500 members in Connecticut. FFRF’s purposes are to defend the constitutional principle of separation between church and state, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
