Grand Island, N.Y. (WBEN) - A student at Grand Island High School is crying foul over her proposed parking space decoration for the upcoming year. Her attorney says the district is violating her First Amendment rights.
Keisha Russell of FirstLiberry.org represents Sabrina Steffans, who paid $50 for a reserved parking space for the upcoming school year. Russell says Steffans wanted to express herself by talking about her love for Jesus and God, and she submitted a design with scripture reference, talking about God is King.
"The school said, 'No, you can't do this because it's religious.' She submitted three different designs, and the third one is pretty benign, no mention of God. They said she can say He, but not God, and she can't mention any scripture verses, so we sent a letter to the school telling them that what they're engaging is in is a violation of the Constitution, that they can't censor her speech just because it's religious, her speech is private, and therefore they need to respect her choice." said Russell with WBEN.
Russell says she got responses from several administrators.
"One was that they felt like it was government speech, like anything going on in the parking lot, so they can control it. The argument against that is that they've opened it up for the students to be able to decide what they want to say, and the messages are from the students, so it's not the school speaking on these parking spots. And so that interpretation is incorrect," she said.
She notes the school district does have the authority to manage some of the messages, in terms of content.
"It can't be threatening or inciting violence or anything like that. But you can't just ban her speech just because it's religious," Russell said. "That's problematic. The other thing that one of the administrators said was, if they allow Christian themes in the parking space, and they also have to allow themes from other religions, or even Satanists or swastikas, and they just kind of went down this sort of slippery slope type argument, which also is not going to benefit them in court, because that is not a reason to censor her speech because you're afraid of someone else's speech."
Russell has sent the letter, giving the district a chance to reverse course, but a notice of claim will be filed if the district doubles down.
Grand Island Superintendent Brian Graham had a brief statement:
"When we received the 11 page document, I shared with our attorney. Of course, we need to digest it, review it, discuss it. And in the meantime, the district has paused any deadlines as it relates to the parking space designs and the painting. So that's on pause. We haven't locked down any deadlines for that, and then we hope, after we get an opportunity to review that information, we'll have an update very soon."