Appeals court reopens suit against school policy on religious songs

October 11, 2006

NEWARK, N.J. (RNS) A federal circuit court has reinstated a lawsuit challenging the Maplewood-South Orange school district's ban on religious songs, ruling that the judge who dismissed the suit relied on a document that should not have been in the case.

The 3-0 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit sends the case back to U.S. District Judge William Walls in Newark, opening a new front in a battle that has attracted national attention.

The Maplewood-South Orange district enacted a policy in 1990 that banned the singing of religious songs in school performances. It stirred up new controversy in 2004 by extending the ban to include instrumental versions of religious songs as well as vocals.

Michael Stratechuk, a parent and musician, filed suit in December 2004 with the help of the Thomas More Law Center, a public interest law firm in Ann Arbor, Mich., that promotes religious freedom for Christians.

The lawsuit contends the ban on all religious music amounts to government hostility toward religion, which it said is a violation of First Amendment protections of freedom of worship.

But the school district responded that the First Amendment prohibits government from promoting any one religion, while allowing it to provide information about religion for educational purposes.

Attorneys for the school district filed a motion to dismiss the suit, based on the district's official policy on religious material. The policy permits religious music as long as it "achieves specific goals of the written curriculum" and "neither inhibits nor advances any religious point of view."

Over the objection of Stratechuk's attorneys, the judge relied on the official policy in dismissing the lawsuit on Sept. 29, 2005.

But the circuit judges agreed with Stratechuk's lawyers, saying the plaintiff had never mentioned the official policy and was challenging a practice that existed independent of the policy.

-- William Kleinknecht