Court Rules against Curriculum Censorship

A three-judge panel of the second U.S.Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the efforts of three Catholic families to censor the curriculum in the Bedford Central School District in Westchester County. In the mid-nineties, the families sued the district alleging their religious rights were violated by, among others, the DARE drug education program. They also charged that the district’s lessons about Aztec and Hindu cultures amounted to “veneration of pagan gods” and therefore violated the separation of church and state. In May 1999, a U.S. District Judge dismissed most of the complaints, but did rule that certain individual teachers crossed the church-state boundary by asking students to recite a creed to ‘Mother Earth’, among other things. The most recent decision ruled that none of the school district’s lessons violated the families’ religious liberties or undermined the separation of church and state.

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