At the beginning of its new term, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed hundreds of cases, including a First Amendment challenge to a principal’s authority to alter religious murals and a complaint from parents regarding their child’s reassignment to another school in a special education dispute. By denying requests to review lower-court decisions, the Supreme Court allowed these rulings to stand as law in their respective jurisdictions. Denials are the outcome for the majority of appeals to the Supreme Court, as the court typically only accepts around 80 cases per term out of the thousands of petitions filed annually.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. announced the denials of review, however, he did not take part in the voting on the petitions since it occurred before he joined the court. One of the rejected appeals concerning education-related matters revolves around First Amendment free-speech issues at Boca Raton Community High School in Palm Beach County, Florida. In 2002, the school’s principal permitted a student leadership class to organize a mural project to adorn plywood panels during renovations. After some students depicted religious references, including God and Jesus, the principal deemed the murals disruptive and instructed a teacher to ask one student, Sharah Harris, to cover up the religious elements she had painted on her murals.
Harris’s mother, Shelda Harris Bannon, filed a lawsuit on her daughter’s behalf, asserting that the school’s demand for her to paint over the murals was an act of censorship that also subjected Harris to public ridicule due to her religious beliefs. Both a federal district court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit upheld the principal’s editorial control over the murals, considering them school-sponsored speech integrated into the curriculum and giving the impression of school endorsement. On October 3, the justices declined to hear the family’s appeal in Bannon v. School District of Palm Beach County (Case No. 04-1207).
The other case involving special education that was dismissed last week involved parents who objected to a Louisiana school district’s decision to relocate their child’s education program from the neighborhood school to a different one without following the procedure for amending an individualized education program under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The Ascension Parish school district argued that a change in location did not qualify as a "change in placement" according to federal law, which was upheld by a state review panel, a federal district court, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in New Orleans. However, the parents claimed in their appeal that the federal Department of Education’s IDEA regulations prioritize assignments to students’ neighborhood schools over other facilities. They urged the Supreme Court to resolve the conflict between the Education Department’s stance and that of the 5th Circuit court. Nevertheless, the justices declined to hear the appeal in Veazey v. Ascension Parish School Board (No. 04-1683).
Another appeal rejected by the Supreme Court last week stemmed from a lawsuit by Patrick Barrett, a substitute teacher in the Steubenville, Ohio, school district, who alleged that his parental rights were violated when the district’s superintendent, Richard Lucci, allegedly informed him that he would not be offered a permanent teaching position because he transferred his son from a public high school to a Catholic school. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit in Cincinnati ruled that the superintendent did not have qualified immunity from the teacher’s lawsuit, as Mr. Barrett had a constitutional right to direct his child’s education. Without comment, the Supreme Court rejected the superintendent’s appeal in Steubenville City Schools v. Barrett (No. 04-1409).
