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Two from Florida school not guilty of contempt
Bob Allen, Associated Baptist Press
September 18, 2009
4 MIN READ TIME

Two from Florida school not guilty of contempt

Two from Florida school not guilty of contempt
Bob Allen, Associated Baptist Press
September 18, 2009

PENSACOLA, Fla. — A federal judge in Florida ruled Sept. 17

that a blessing at an athletic banquet did not violate her court order telling

a school district’s leaders to refrain from promoting religious activity at

school events.

Following a day-long hearing, U.S. District Judge Casey

Rodgers acquitted Pace High School Principal Frank Lay and Athletic Director

Robert Freeman of criminal contempt of court. If convicted, the two men could

have faced up to $5,000 in fines and six months in jail.

In January Rodgers ordered school officials of the Santa

Rosa County, Fla., school to discontinue practices promoting prayer at

school-sponsored events, including commencement exercises; planning or

financing religious baccalaureate services; promoting religious beliefs to

students in class or during school-sponsored events and activities and holding

school-sponsored events at churches.

The injunction stemmed from a lawsuit filed in August 2008

on behalf of two Pace students by the American Civil Liberties Union. It

accused school officials, including Lay and school-board members, of using

their governmental positions to promote their personal religious beliefs in

public schools in violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.

Nine days after Rodgers’ injunction, Frank asked Freeman to

lead a blessing of the food at a banquet honoring people who contributed to the

school’s new athletic fieldhouse. The ACLU alerted the judge, and she ordered

the two men to face criminal contempt proceedings.

The case is the latest battleground in the culture war over

school prayer. In June about 400 seniors at Pace High School stood up in protest

of the ACLU at their graduation ceremony and recited the Lord’s Prayer. In May

Lay spoke

during a Sunday-night service at Olive Baptist Church in nearby Pensacola,

where he is a member and deacon, proclaiming that America was founded on

Judeo-Christian principles and saying that every day he walks school hallways

and sees kids who “need Jesus.”

During their Sept. 17 hearing, however, both Lay and Freeman

testified that they had merely acted out of habit in invoking God’s blessing at

the athletic banquet. After the hearing Rodgers ruled the two did not

intentionally violate her temporary injunction banning school prayer.

Afterward, Lay spoke to about 1,000 supporters who held

vigil outside the courthouse throughout the rainy day. “Above all I want to

thank chief counsel, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit,” Lay

told the cheering crowd, according

to the Pensacola News-Journal.

ACLU attorney Benjamin Stevenson told the newspaper that

despite the ruling in Lay and Freeman’s favor, Judge Rodgers made it clear that

“the unconstitutional promoting of religion by public school officials will not

be tolerated.”

The lawsuit filed by the ACLU alleged a repeated pattern by

school officials of “promoting and endorsing prayers at graduation ceremonies

and other school events, of sponsoring religious ceremonies and holding

official school events at churches.”

A Pace High employee handbook introduced

as evidence said all school personnel are expected to “embrace every

opportunity to inculcate, by precept and example, the principles of truth,

honesty and patriotism and the practice of every Christian virtue.”

“Parents, not the public schools, should be responsible for

deciding whether their children receive religious education,” Benjamin

Stevenson, staff attorney with the ACLU of Florida’s Northwest Region office,

said in a press release.

“Religious freedom is eroded when the government endorses any particular

religious viewpoint.”

A supporter of Lay and Freeman, Ted Traylor,

pastor of Olive Baptist Church in Pensacola, said

the goal of the ACLU was to create a Jesus-free zone on public-school campuses.

Traylor, a former president of the Florida Baptist Convention and first vice

president of the Southern Baptist Convention, helped

raise money for a defense fund

for the two men, which totaled nearly $70,000.

(EDITOR’S NOTE — Allen is senior writer for Associated

Baptist Press.)