A school board in West Virginia seems determined to wage a costly legal battle to keep a portrait of Jesus Christ on display in one of its high schools.
Last night, the Harrison County Board of Education for the second time voted to continue its support of a print of Jesus that hangs outside the principal’s office at Bridgeport High School. The 1941 Warner Sallman rendering is the nation’s most recognizable devotional artwork of Christianity’s central figure.
Earlier this summer, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the ACLU of West Virginia filed a lawsuit in federal court arguing that the religious display is a blatant violation of the First Amendment. The case was brought on behalf of two Bridgeport residents, Hal Sklar and Jacqueline McKenzie.
On June 6, the board’s president and vice president voted to remove the print. Their motion, however, failed because one board member, Doug Gray, was absent, and two others voted against it.
Yesterday evening, newly elected board member Mike Queen insisted that the portrait of Jesus be kept on display. Queen asked the other members to support his motion to raise $150,000 in donations by the board’s next meeting Aug. 15 to pay anticipated legal costs. Queen’s motion prevailed by a 3-2 vote. President Wilson W. Currey and Vice President Sally J. Cann voted against Queen’s idea, but members James L. Reaser and Doug Gray supported it.
Cann told a CBS television affiliate, Channel 13, “Education is not the focus, at the present time, of the Harrison County Board of Education. The Jesus picture is.”
Several Religious Right legal outfits, including the Mississippi-based American Family Association, have offered free legal counsel to the school board. But as a reporter for Channel 13 pointed out, that defense won’t be of much use to the school district if it loses in court, because it would still be responsible for court costs and attorneys’ fees for the plaintiffs. A public school board in Pennsylvania had to cough up a million dollars after it lost a court battle over its defense of a policy pushing “intelligent design” in its science courses.
The Harrison County school board’s attorney, Richard “Dink” Yurko, has advised board members that they may lose the case. According to the Channel 13 report, he said last night, “I’ve been told that one group puts us at once percent chance of winning.”
Federal court jurisprudence on religion in the public schools has not changed for many years. School-sponsored religion is clearly unconstitutional. That means that public school officials, who are state actors, must not use their positions to promote religion. A 1993 federal court case from Michigan, Washegesic v. Bloomingdale Public Schools, dealt with facts similar to those in West Virginia. In a Bloomingdale high school, a Sallman print had been on display for 30 years outside the principal’s office. A federal judge found the display unconstitutional and ordered its removal.
The federal judge concluded, “The fact that a portrait of Jesus hangs in the school’s hallway implies school endorsement of the picture. Students may feel pressure, if not to believe in the teachings of Jesus, at least to suppress any disagreement they might have with the Christian religion.”
It was noted at last night’s board meeting that Harrison County has already spent $16,000 in defending the picture of Jesus. But even greater damage is being done. The Bridgeport community is drifting into an increasingly divisive religious battle — one that pits students and neighbors against one another.
It should not have come to this. The Bridgeport High School principal should have donated the print of Jesus to a local house of worship a long time ago. Failing that action, the school board should have ordered its removal. Bridgeport is not a private religious academy. The public school is a place that should be welcoming to all students of different faiths and none.
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