High Court Declines to Hear Case on Pupil’s Use Of Religious Images

The U.S. Supreme Court last week declined to review a case in which educators at a New York school restricted religious viewpoints that a student expressed in a class assignment having nothing to do with religion.

The court’s refusal to consider a ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit means that public schools in Connecticut, New York, and Vermont, the states covered by the New York City-based appeals court, may not censor a student’s viewpoint on curriculum subjects when it is a response to a school assignment or program, said Mathew D. Staver, the lawyer who represented the student in the case.

At issue is a poster that Antonio Peck, who in the spring of 2000 was a kindergartner at McNamara Elementary School in the 5,900-student Baldwinsville, N.Y., school district, made at home with the help of his mother, JoAnne Peck, for an assignment on recycling. His teacher had directed her students to create posters based on a two-month environmental unit; the posters were to be displayed at a school environmental program to which...