After a year of harassment and years of litigation, a judge ruled in favor of students and their freedom to assemble in a Fellowship of Christian Athletes meeting. The California school district recently agreed to a nearly $6 million settlement with the FCA. While media outlets joined with the school in blaming the students for their closed minds, the judge ruled in favor of the students.
What Happened?
A Fellowship of Christian Athletes student group had been operating at Pioneer High School in San Jose. The group required leaders to agree with its statement of faith. This statement included accepting sexual purity and saying that marriage is between one man and one woman. In 2019, a teacher wrote their beliefs on a whiteboard and encouraged students to harass the FCA members. The high school stripped the FCA group of its official status. Protests and bullying occurred at every meeting through 2020.
Court Cases
The first court case ruled in favor of the school. However, an appeals judge ruled that the school says it is discriminatory yet excludes the FCA. Now, after years of litigation, Christian students are free to operate the group according to their beliefs. The judge ordered the school district to give the groups all of the benefits, rights, and privileges that each group’s school site grants any other non-curriculum-related student group. His order stops the school district from penalizing FCA. School administrators can not allow any protest of FCA groups to occur within 40 feet of the entrance to an FCA meeting. Furthermore, the court ruled that the San Jose Unified School District will pay $5.8 million in attorneys’ fees and expenses to law firms and $90,000 in damages each to two FCA student leaders.
One Constitutional lawyer even stated that this was a huge victory for liberty for all American students.
