Four years ago, Chad Farnan was a high school student at Capistrano High School in Orange County, CA. Day after day, he would attend his Advanced Placement European History class and have to endure anti-religious statements from his teacher, such as, “When you put on your Jesus glasses, you can’t see the truth.” Chad realized that this offensive speech was an attack on religion and thus violated his First Amendment rights. He came to Advocates for help, and we have brought this case before several different Courts. We had a victory in the District Court, where the Judge ruled that this teacher violated the Establishment Clause in at least one instance when he expressed "an unequivocal belief that creationism is 'superstitious nonsense.’"
The case was appealed to the Ninth Circuit, which overturned that ruling and said that the teacher was immune from a lawsuit since there was no case like this before. Then, the Ninth Circuit refused to rule on the constitutionality of the teacher’s conduct as it should have done, leaving future teachers free to discriminate.
We have fought for Chad and his family since the beginning, and we are now taking his case to the highest Court in our nation ⎼⎼ the U.S. Supreme Court. Why? Because we believe that this case is supremely important to establish once and for all that public schools must provide a neutral educational environment. Although we support the majority of teachers who teach responsibly, we cannot tolerate those public school teachers who abuse their position to force anti-Christian ideology onto our students!
We will be working diligently over the next month preparing our petition to the U.S. Supreme Court asking the Court to accept Chad’s case for review.
Chad, his family, and all of us at Advocates appreciate your prayers and support as we pursue this case further. Our hope is that this landmark education case will provide powerful precedent for the future.