By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
The Supreme Court has refused to hear the case of a high school senior from Washington state who was forbidden by school officials to play an instrumental version of “Ave Maria” at her graduation.
The case, Nurre v Whitehead, concerns senior high student Kathryn Nurre and members of the woodwind ensemble from Henry M. Jackson High School in Snohomish County, Wash., who elected to perform an instrumental version of Franz Biebl’s “Ave Maria” at the school’s graduation ceremonies in 2006. School officials prohibited the performance of the song for fear that it might be considered religious.
Apparently, their decision was based on an incident that had happened a year earlier when someone complained after a song with religious lyrics was played at the senior graduation. A heated letter about the incident was also published in the local newspaper, causing further embarrassment for the school.
W. Theodore Vander Wel of The Rutherford Institute, attorney for Ms. Nurre, said this is no reason to deny students their right to free expression. He accused the school of censorship and political correctness run amok, with art and student expression being “sacrificed to a heckler’s veto that seeks to sanitize even the remotest vestige of religion from public life.”
However, the school’s attorney, Michael Patterson, argued in his brief that the“school district is not seeking to deprive students of learning opportunities, nor is it seeking to purge altogether religious-inspired works from public education. It simply sought to provide an atmosphere in which all graduates could celebrate their academic achievements, free from controversial messages, and free from the controversy that plagued its past graduation ceremony.”
After two courts sided with the school district, The Rutherford Institute asked the Supreme Court to weigh in on the case in December 2009.
Yesterday, the Court handed down a decision to refuse to hear the case. However, Justice Samuel Alito disagreed with the decision and was harshly critical of school officials in his dissenting opinion.
“When a public school purports to allow students to express themselves, it must respect the students’ free speech rights,” stated Alito in a six-page opinion on the case. “School administrators may not behave like puppet masters who create the illusion that students are engaging in personal expression when in fact the school administration is pulling the strings.”
John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute, expressed his disappointment in the Court’s refusal.
“Free speech in the public schools is on life support,” he said. “With this decision, the Supreme Court may have pulled the plug. It’s a sad day for freedom in America.”
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