Jury will not hear case until Feb. 2008 at earliest
A federal jury will not determine if the Indian River School District violated First Amendment rights to free practice of religion as outlined in the U.S. Constitution until February of 2008 at the earliest, after the trial originally scheduled June 4, 2007, was postponed last month.
Mona and Marco Dobrich — whose children are former district students — filed the federal lawsuit in February of 2005, claiming that the district had created a religiously exclusive environment by promoting Christianity at school board meetings, at other school events and within district schools. Another family filed anonymously along with the Dobriches.
Citing alleged harassment after they made their complaints public, the Dobriches moved out of the district and their former home shortly after the legal filing, relocating upstate.
A trial in Delaware’s Wilmington federal district courthouse was originally scheduled for June 4, 2007, and has been rescheduled for Feb. 11, 2008, in front of Judge Joseph J. Farnan Jr., who has been presiding over the case since the filing. An extension of the information-gathering stage caused the postponement, attorneys working on the case said.
The complaint, filed on Feb. 28, 2005, includes claims that district officials and teachers offered preferential treatment to students who attended Bible Club meetings, handed out Bibles in school, told students there was only “one true religion” and selected a graduation speaker based on religious bias. It also questioned the Indian River School Board’s legal ability to pray at the opening of monthly meetings at which students were often required to be present.
A settlement offer approved by the board and sent to the plaintiffs last November could resolve the matter before trial but defense attorneys are still awaiting a response. Jason Gosselin, an attorney with the Philadelphia law firm Drinker, Biddle and Reath who is representing the district, would not comment on the specifics but noted “productive” meetings with Tom Allingham, a Wilmington attorney representing the plaintiffs.
Allingham said he would not — and does not, by practice — comment on settlement negotiations, even to acknowledge that they exist.
A settlement offered by the plaintiffs but denied by the board on Feb. 27, 2006, would have brought a civil yet expensive end to the controversial case. According to court documents, it included a six-figure monetary award for damages and agreement to several other conditions.
The settlement would have required district officials to remove specific references to “Christmas” and “Easter” in outlining school vacation-periods on its calendar and bump children of the plaintiffs to the head of admissions wait lists for different district schools than they had previously attended. Those then-confidential stipulations were reported first by the Coastal Point on April 21 and later confirmed by the unsealing of court documents on Aug. 21.
The rejected settlement also would have required the adoption of pre-drafted policies regarding religion in school, a major sticking-point for board members who normally help in drafting any district policy, according to court documents.
It would have allowed, however, the board to continue to pray before board meetings, essentially dropping the challenge to the board’s legal ability to do so — a significant point of debate within the lawsuit that was being investigated separately from all other claims.
In a recent Louisiana case, the district court ruled against a local school board on a similar matter and declared the prayers held to open meetings there to be unconstitutional. The case was largely founded on the question of whether the school board is an extension of the public school system rather than a legislative body. A 1983 U.S. Supreme Court case, Marsh v. Chambers, allowed a legislative exception for non-sectarian, non-proselytizing prayers.
The district court ruling in that case, against the school district, was upheld in a Dec. 16, 2006, ruling from the appeals court. That ruling rejected the argument that the prayers were non-sectarian, and instead found that they “aggressively advocate[d] Christianity.” However, the appeals court opinion avoided dealing with the issue of whether school boards in general fall under the Marsh exception. “In so holding, this opinion takes no position on whether another form of prayer is permissible at Board meetings,” reads the appeals court’s opinion. “Instead, it holds that prayers of the type included in the stipulations do not pass constitutional muster.” Despite the apparent victory for the plaintiffs in that case, they have left open the question of whether they will themselves appeal in order to have that central issue answered by the courts.
A 1971 Supreme Court decision in the case of Lemon v. Kurtzman held that government action must have a secular purpose, neither advance nor inhibit religion, and not become excessively entangled with religion. The Louisiana school board had stipulated that its prayers would fail to be permitted under that ruling — something the district and appeals court cited in ruling against the school board and not considering the precedent of the Marsh case.
However, a previous Farnan decision could indicate that his decision in the IRSD case might lean in the other direction, with a finding for the school district as a legislative body under Marsh. When releasing school district officials and board members as individual defendants in a summer 2005 decision, Farnan essentially referred to the board as a legislative body when he wrote that prayer to open legislative meetings is “steeped in the history and tradition” of the nation.
Graphic Arts Mutual — Indian River’s insurer — sued the district for legal fees accumulated after the board rejected the settlement against the advice of its insurance-agency-appointed attorneys. A mediation conference for the insurance suit, wherein the case could be settled with the help of another federal judge who will serve as a go-between, is set for June 7. Mediation is used to settle legal disputes without litigation.