{"id":993,"date":"2016-12-20T09:11:08","date_gmt":"2016-12-20T15:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forvidas.org\/blogmg\/?p=993"},"modified":"2017-07-18T07:56:13","modified_gmt":"2017-07-18T13:56:13","slug":"993","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forvidas.org\/blogmg\/?p=993","title":{"rendered":"Judge allows a ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’ poster"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n
By: Julieta Chiquillo<\/h5>\n

A Texas nurse’s aide can now display her poster based on A Charlie Brown Christmas <\/i>at a middle school after a judge issued a temporary restraining order against the Killeen ISD officials who had banned the poster.<\/p>\n

District Judge Jack Jones in Bell County sided with nurse’s aide Dedra Shannon at a hearing Thursday, the Houston Chronicle reported.  He ordered that the poster — which features the character Linus citing a biblical passage about the birth of Christ — also include the phrase “Ms. Shannon’s holiday message.”<\/p>\n

It was a victory of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who joined Shannon on Thursday in filing a lawsuit against the district, the middle school principal, the superintendent and the school board. All members of the school board but one backed the principal’s decision last week to order Shannon to take down the part of her poster. District officials had defended the decision by explaining that school employees can’t force their religious beliefs on students. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n

“Religious discrimination towards Christians has become a holiday tradition of sorts among certain groups,” Paxton said in a statement. “I am glad to see that the court broke through the left’s rhetorical fog and recognized that a commitment to diversity means protecting everyone’s individual religious expression.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
<\/a><\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
A picture of Dedra Shannon’s poster in a letter sent by a nonprofit to Killeen ISD.<\/em><\/div>\n
(Texas Values)<\/em><\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n

Paxton said in the lawsuit that Texas had a right to intervene because the state should defend the proper interpretation of its laws. He noted that Texas law only requires that the government be neutral in how it treats believers and non-believers.<\/p>\n

“School officials may constitutionally present Christmas passages from the Bible, such as Luke 2:1-20 — the passage quoted in A Charlie Brown Christmas<\/i> — via myriad teaching methods, including Ms. Shannon’s door display,” Paxton wrote in the suit.<\/p>\n

The fracas over the poster has turned into a debate about the extent of school employees’ free speech rights on campus. The First Amendment prohibits the government from establishing an official religion.<\/p>\n

“As a public employee, you don’t have an unfettered right to say whatever you want,” said David L. Hudson Jr., a First Amendment expert at the Vanderbilt University Law School.<\/p>\n

Hudson said it’s generally a good idea for school employees to avoid advancing religious doctrine, but in his view, there are valid arguments on either side of the Killeen ISD case. He said the district can point out that the poster could convey the impression that a public employee is endorsing a particular belief and make people from other faiths feel pressured, specially impressionable ones like children.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, he said, the school employee could contend that the display is obviously a personal religious expression not attributable to the school.<\/p>\n

“Somewhere there’s that line,” Hudson said. “Exactly where that line is, ultimately courts will have to draw.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By: Julieta Chiquillo A Texas nurse’s aide can now display her poster based on A Charlie Brown Christmas at a middle school after a judge issued a temporary restraining order against the Killeen ISD officials who had banned the poster. District Judge Jack Jones in Bell County sided with nurse’s aide Dedra Shannon at a hearing Thursday, the Houston Chronicle reported.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":1005,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[112,123],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","category-most-popular"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forvidas.org\/blogmg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forvidas.org\/blogmg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forvidas.org\/blogmg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forvidas.org\/blogmg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forvidas.org\/blogmg\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=993"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/forvidas.org\/blogmg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":999,"href":"https:\/\/forvidas.org\/blogmg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/993\/revisions\/999"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forvidas.org\/blogmg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forvidas.org\/blogmg\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forvidas.org\/blogmg\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forvidas.org\/blogmg\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}