Columbine memorial tiles may not carry religious messages

January 27, 2003

Columbine memorial tiles may not carry religious messages
___WASHINGTON (ABP)--The Supreme Court has declined to hear a thorny First Amendment case that pitted two groups of survivors of the Columbine High School shooting against each other.
___On Jan. 13, the high court denied, without comment, an appeal from the families of two of the victims of the 1999 shootings. The families of shooting victims Daniel Rohrbough and Kelly Fleming had asked the court to overturn an earlier decision against them by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. They sued the Jefferson County (Colo.) School District for the right to include Christian messages on special decorative tiles they had been asked to paint.
___The tiles--designed by Columbine students, rescue workers who were called to the scene of the shooting and families of the shooting victims--were to be installed in the hallways of the school.
___School officials asked those painting the tiles not to include religious imagery, references to the attack or its date, names of victims or anything "obscene or offensive" on the tiles. The plaintiffs objected to the rules.
___After consultation with teachers overseeing the tile painting, were allowed to paint tiles with messages such as "Jesus Christ is Lord," "4/20/99 Jesus Wept," and "There is no peace, says the Lord, for the wicked," according to court documents.
___The plaintiffs were informed that their tiles would not be affixed to the walls along with the other tiles because they violated the rules. However, some of the plaintiffs' tiles slipped past two more screening processes to remove offending tiles and ended up being placed on the walls.
___About 80 of the 2,100 tiles that had been installed were later removed, including some of the plaintiffs' tiles. Other tiles that were removed contained imagery such as the anarchy symbol, a human head dripping with blood, angels, a Star of David and gang graffiti.
___The plaintiffs then sued.
___A lower federal court ruled that school officials had created a "limited public forum" by allowing community members to participate in the tile creation, and thus were bound by Supreme Court precedent to allow any sort of reasonable expression, including religious expression.
___The school district appealed to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which reversed the lower court's decision. Judge David Ebel, writing the opinion of the three-judge panel, found that school officials had instead created a non-public forum that was school-facilitated and school-sponsored, and in which the school had a compelling interest to control the kinds of speech allowed. Therefore, the school could choose to disallow certain kinds of expression, including religious expression.
___School officials had worried that religious expressions enshrined on the school's walls would prove controversial among students, as well as leave the school vulnerable to attack for violating the Constitution's ban on government support for religious messages.
___Ebel agreed: "The tiles at issue in this case will become a lasting part of the school. The presence of permanently affixed tiles on the walls implicates the school's approval of those tiles."
___The plaintiffs had argued that the school should not be allowed to discriminate on the basis of "viewpoint" in the kinds of speech allowed on the memorial tiles. However, Ebel said that following such a rule could create all kinds of other problems for the school district.
___"If the district were required to be viewpoint neutral in this matter, the district would be required to post tiles with inflammatory and divisive statements, such as 'God is Hate,' once it allows tiles that say 'God is Love,'" Ebel said. "When posed with such a choice, schools may very well elect to not sponsor speech at all, thereby limiting speech instead of increasing it."
___Plaintiff Donald Fleming was unimpressed by the Supreme Court's refusal to reverse the 10th Circuit decision.
___"The school district apparently believes in freedom from religion instead of freedom of religion," Fleming told the Denver Post. "To me, the (school) district has some strange values. But the court appears to have the same values."
___School district officials had mixed feelings even as they welcomed the decision. "It has never been easy to be in opposition with families of the victims," Jefferson County School District spokesman Rick Kaufman said, as reported in the Post. "They have suffered tremendously, not only through the tragedy but the aftermath. Litigation, unfortunately, forces communities to pick sides."

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