Preaching at a High School Graduation?

[Music] hi I'm Dan Barker and welcome to FFRF s ask an atheist I am the co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation we are a national organization of atheists and agnostics and we're broadcasting today from our national office in Madison Wisconsin and I'm Ryan Jayne one of the nine constitutional attorneys here at FFRF so we started the show with pomp and circumstances which you know it's nice to hear that song once but if you go to a graduation how many times you hear buzz campers doing sound in the studio we can't talk to buzz can't we know buzz buzz has been doing sound for the graduations here in Wisconsin I don't know how many of them and he's just about screaming when he comes in here I don't want to hear pomp and circumstance anymore so buzz that was for you today we played played the song but there's a there's a bright side to pomp and circumstance and you know cuz you're a classical pianist Edward Elgar who wrote the music pomp and circumstance of things a British composer he was a non-believer right yeah that's right huh well on some I mean you see it a lot in old classical music sometimes where it was your Commission to write a piece that's supposed to be for a church service or something so but it comes across as religious music but then you find out in their private writings and whatnot that they were oftentimes skeptics agnostics and whatnot so we can at least rejoice in that fact when we hear pompous circumstances that it was he was a non-believer freethinker in his life that's right and speaking of pomp and circumstances this week we'll be taking a look at a pompous circumstance at a public high school graduation that was well put thank you right here in Wisconsin this show is called ask an atheist and so we really want your questions feel free to post your comments you can see right there on the screen or your questions right on the Facebook page itself or you can send them send an email to ask an atheist at FFRF dot org so it's coming to the end of high school graduation here in the Midwest and you can joke all you like about speech you here at graduations all the time congratulations your whole life lies before you and so on isn't that true though but well the rest of your life lies before you that's true in any case but uh but at public schools at least the one thing that you should never hear is preaching in the Fox Valley city of Appleton Wisconsin the folks who attended the Appleton North High School ceremony got just that they got preaching courtesy of a local pastor in town who happens to also be an Appleton school board member his name is Reverend Alvin Dupree the Fox TV affiliate WL UK in Green Bay ran a story on this controversy last Monday evening and let's take a look at it and you might recognize somebody who shows up in this piece an Appleton pastor may be feeling the heat for bringing religion into Apple to North's high school graduation ceremony pastor Alvin Dupree is also on the applicants School District's Board of Education an organization that fights for the separation of church and state wants the district to take action Fox Levin's Monique Lopez has that story all new at 10 you get me you get my black skin I can't hide it you get me to get my faith it's it's my personality it's my makeup my source of strength is my faith my relationship with Jesus Christ it sounds like I've got some believers in this room if you're here you believe that go ahead and clap your hands after a ten and a half minute speech delivered by pastor and school board member Alvin Dupree the Freedom From Religion Foundation says they began getting complaints those complaints coming directly from Appleton North students and parents it made those students who are not Christian feel like outsiders they felt like this is my graduation and I'm being made to feel like this is not my graduation this is a Christian community and I'm being forced to listen to Christian messages I said cans with over 400 plus students who graduate graduated that day and I can tell you over 100 of them when they shook my hand said thank you god bless you too Dupree says he believes this is nothing more than a personal attack by a couple of school board members stemming from his work in the Appleton School District truancy court because I've previously made it clear that it's my faith my conviction that would not allow for me to be silent with the truancy court that went on for a decade Dupree went on to include a student who died before graduation in his remarks can we just pause for a moment and just reflect on him as I pray for him for myself he's really a maverick he's really he's breaking the law and clouding it and bragging about it and in this country of laws somehow those laws need to be enforced Dupree then concluded his speech by changing things up a bit it was typed out to say best wishes but I'm changing their script to what I would say god bless abandoning that script to not conform to any man's norm I used my personality because it's come for me to say god bless you and that's exactly what I meant I meant God bless you does not have carte blanche to abuse his office to push his personal religion on everybody else the FFRF says it hasn't taken legal action yet it says it wants to give the district a chance to correct the problem first in Appleton Monique Lopez Fox 11 News Wow then you got a lot of airtime in that piece well yeah but what that story didn't reveal is that you Ryan you're the lawyer who wrote that letter to the Appleton School Board and so tell us about this how did you find out about Reverend du Preez unconstitutional antics well it started three years ago actually in the two years ago excuse me in the 2017 Appleton North graduation we first heard that Dupree did the same thing essentially he spoke at the graduation we knew he was a newly elected at that time school board member and we got a complaint that just said the school board member who is also a pastor spoke with a graduation spent the time promoting religion so we wrote to the the school district initially just saying this is a problem take a look at this and make sure this doesn't happen again we got kind of a wishy-washy response was which we weren't thrilled with of course but we looked into it a little bit more and found that when he ran for the school board he actually ran in a platform of bringing Christian values to the school and being a man of God first that's what he ran on he actually on the ballot was listed as Alvin pastor Dupree and he leans on that all the time saying that you know it said pastor on the ballot people voted for that so I should be allowed to be a pastor when I'm on the school board of course that's that's not how the law works so we we recognized at that point that this guy is going to be a continuing problem if the district doesn't do anything about it so can I ask you something he's saying that since he openly as a pastor with Christian values and the people voted for that that gives him carte blanche people knew what they were getting and so that's what they got and he can say what he wants that's right that's his twisted version of how he thinks the law works which it's not of course the Bill of Rights is specifically a an act of removing certain things from majority rule so even if the majority decides we want to limit this element of free speech you you have a right to protect that so the majority doesn't get to to trample that right so that's why it's just a non-starter what that argument that well they voted for a pastor so therefore the Establishment Clause doesn't apply to me that's not at all how the Constitution like if a mayor was campaigning on the premise that he's gonna shut down all the newspapers and all the TV I'm gonna shut down free speech right and people voted for that yeah was the mayor still can't do it you can't do it right and and he even made it clear that not only was he going to you know how be motivated by his own Christian values in the way that he does things but he was actually really upfront about violating the Establishment Clause but using his position to push religion he gave a presentation to a local political group that the title of the presentation was placing God in the classroom so that we don't know exactly what he said at that presentation but when you name your presentation that you're obviously intent on inserting religion in the public school system that's the whole point of that he also we found after the fact after we had written to the School District got response he went on a Christian radio show a podcast and said a whole bunch of thing I was actually I was just blown away by this this interview I've never heard a school board member so flagrant about his intent to insert religion into the public school system using that position but that's what he what he did he went on this show and I believe we have a clip where he's saying that he supports teachers by telling their students my faith help me you might want to find a church in your neighborhood so let's let's hear that but when there's an intentionality of not allowing people of faith just be open I think that says just a total infringement of the First Amendment right yes and I just have an ability to tell a child to pray or to go to school to find a church or point a parent in that direction is this kind of hurting our communities so if this bait-and-switch right where he says well if you silence me you're violating my free exercise of religion which again is just completely backwards so there's an irony here we saw in that news story that ran Monday night that pastor Dupree made a point of his skin color he said I'm a black person I can't hide that and I'm a person of faith and you and I can't hide that as well and yet wouldn't you think that somebody who has been campaigning his whole life for inclusivity and for the rights of minorities not to feel excluded would then want to turn around and exclude minorities by singling out the majority over the arrest yes absolutely and you did a good job in the that news piece of pointing out that side of it that you know has to Dupre what you're doing is you are excluding minorities based on their religious affiliation this is anti religious freedom what you're doing you are the government and you are coming in here and saying rah rah Christianity that that's a problem and he just is obviously completely blinded to that just doesn't want to hear it because there were students who cheered but there were students who didn't I mean this in the class in the school situation then here's a dynamic that's introduced oh your part and I'm not I'm an outsider and some of those students felt that right and it wasn't just that he that that happened initially but he played into it when that happened he said it sounds like I have some believers in the room and you know putting go ahead and clap your hands so it's pretty much saying is he may as well have said if you're a Christian please stand up and raise your hand you know or the inverse of it effectively is if you're not Christian please you know just walk to the back of the room you're not part of this guy and we are the good people and we are the winners and we're and we are the ones and everyone else should join us race achlys yeah proselytize right and what he's not getting is that it's improper for the government to be doing that so so that was all the that was the and then we actually earlier this year you know we've been keeping our eye on on Dupree obviously because we'll get again we weren't thrilled with how the the district handled it a couple years ago so earlier this year there was a Martin Luther King Day of Service event that we we heard about that also it took place at the high school it was co-sponsored by the school and some other groups but Dupree spoke mentioned religion a little bit and then introduced a different minister who gave a prayer and so that's problematic of course to have a prayer a scheduled prayer at a school sponsored event in the high school so we wrote about that as well saying we want to do about this guy a couple years ago this happened again we got records that show that he actually using his school district email address set up that prayer he reached out to this minister and said would you please come and give give a prayer at this at this event so he was orchestrating and he's the one again inserting religion into this school sponsored program so we wrote again and said this the this is a problem once again deal with it and then we at least got a response from the school district attorney who understands the law as most attorneys do they would take a look at this and say this is a major problem the school district is obviously looking at a potential lawsuit here if they don't do something about it so we had actually already planned on working with the school district to to get some training in place so that everyone at the district school board members and also other staff understand about how the Establishment Clause works and why these arguments that Dupree keeps making are just not in line with reality so that was all pending we had no idea that he was intending to speak at this year's graduation but that's what happened so this that was in the air we were working with the district to fix this problem when the clip we opened with happened and so then so the school board invited him to speak is that it to invited him not to speak but to hand out the diplomas that's right yep so he yeah he was the one to accept the class on behalf of the school board and my understanding is that that was a school board decision but of course the the administration this Intendant is the they're kind of the boots on the ground or the principal during that event where when things start to violate federal law they have a responsibility to jump in and cut his mic or do whatever you need to do to stop it so so we heard about this again and obviously I was pretty frustrated because I warned the district repeatedly about this so I wrote a pretty long detailed and stern letter saying we want a solid fix to this we want you to do what you would do with anyone else who is invited to speak gets on stage and then violates the law which is to say Dupree should not be allowed to speak at any future district events not school board meetings of course those are different he's a school board member but you should not have him be a speaker because he's going to violate the law he's said that repeatedly he's going to do that so that at a minimum is what were we're asking for so I think it was in that clip we saw I think it might have been the principal of the school sitting behind him there or somebody and when he made those remarks there was no reaction there was no like it was almost like this is just a normal thing you can do and yet they had been warned about this very thing yep and so you can really understand how any student in the audience when they see that there's the school remember promoting religion and admin sitting behind him not blinking an eye of course this looks like a district sponsored message this is not even though you're right to say he is a maverick he's justifying everything openly saying I'm going to do whatever I want but also the the silence from the school at this point looks very clearly like agreement an endorsement and so that's why the district needs to really put their foot down soon and tell Dupree this will not be happening again we're not going to be giving you this platform and of course Dupree does not have a First Amendment right to speak at high school graduations or at any other district events even though he's a school board member yeah so there were a number of students who we were really impressed with who took on their own initiative were upset about the this graduation speech that Dupree gave and so they wrote a letter that they submit to the school board and also to local media so we got a hold of it and it was it is really well well done and I think you want to have a copy of the letter there's 29 students that signed this letter after the graduation and it's a there's a letter worth reading if you want to go online and find it they have some good arguments they talk about the Santa Fe decision in Texas they talk about Lee versus Weisman which specifically talks about graduations and why it's wrong and in the letter they make some strong lines here they say his speech ostracized those who did not align with his views they say pastor Dupree created in-group and out-group by allowing those in a majority group to differentiate themselves from others and align themselves with a person in a position of power later on in the letter they're quoting the Weizmann case which says the Constitution forbids the state to exact religious conformity from a student at the price of attending her own high school graduation and they said her because it was the daughter who complained in that particular Wiseman case right now and then later in the letter they say pastor Dupree the school board and the Appleton Area School District would do well to remember that public schools may not be used as a pulpit yeah and that's exactly what Dupree did he used that public position as a pulpit for his private religious views that's right yeah and I again I was just really blown away by high-schoolers writing that that was really well put you know as a lawyer I often make the mistake trying to talk to people about this and I just fall back on the law and I say well there's the Supreme Court case this is this and this one that says that and of course they are cutting to the meat of it this is why those laws are important and this is why this protects religious liberty we often say you can't have freedom of religion without a government that is free from religion and this is why it creates division at exclu foods minority religious and non-religious residents and that's bad for everybody it's bad for the government and it's bad for churches so we complained as a result of somebody in the town bringing it to our attention but we didn't know about this letter that's right these students all on their own decided this was injuring them as participants in their own graduation and so they wrote this letter off demanding that the school board do something is the school board gonna do something I expect that they will so the the board is meeting tonight and I'm sure that their based on talking to their their attorney they are and also comments from the superintendent they are seeing this as something that needs immediate resolution so I expect they'll be discussing this tonight also if anyone's watching from the Fox Valley area feel free to to go to the meeting and express your your thoughts on this issue so hopefully we will be hearing in the by tomorrow I would hope on what the district is going to do about this and then we can decide what what's gonna happen next as I mentioned before we've been working with the district about setting up training to try to fix this problem generally speaking in the district but also specifically we're expecting that Dupree will be specifically barred from speaking at future district events and the other thing that we've encouraged them to do and I hope they'll be discussing tonight is the looking at their policy for graduation speakers where you don't need to have someone up on stage that you are just trusting to follow the rules and if they don't you're gonna cut their mic or something what you can do and I think it is a responsible decision by a school district is to say all of your remarks have to be pre-screened by us and if you then go off of those marks those remarks then we will be cutting your mic there's a blanket policy applies to everybody and that's also it's it's not usually school board members who you need to worry about going off the deep end like this it's oftentimes students and what are you gonna do if you have a policy that just says well you're the valedictorian you have five minutes to say anything you want there is a chance that that student is going to go up there and say things that the school is really uncomfortable with and doesn't want them to say like white supremacy rule I mean what if I mean if you ever free to say anything they wanted then it would be an open yeah or or hail Satan you know anything that that might just make them cringe like oh geez I you know this is and they're gonna get this flood of complaints but if they jump in after after telling the student you can get up there and say anything you want don't worry about it if they jump in and say oh wait we don't like what you're speaking now you actually have a free speech problem potentially because they've opened that forum they allowed the student to come up and speak so that's why it's just it's not a very wise policy to do it that way it makes much more sense to just scream I hope one of the school board members is watching this show today and hearing you your suggestion Ryan yeah I hope so while so I made it pretty clear in the letter so they've they've read it but you know while I understand that that school district has been very good proactively good about multiculturalism and inclusivity and about respecting the rights of minorities they have been actively pushing this whole program of not excluding minorities so you would think that soil would be fertile for some kind of a policy change yes and that's and that the students did a great job too of complimenting the district on their efforts in that regard and also you can understand why Dupre is desperately trying to flip the script and say he brought up some some truancy court or something that I had you know obviously no idea about and the people who came to us with these these complaints they didn't say we're mad about the this guy's action with some pterence in court and so let's get him on this other thing i but you can understand why he is really trying to say he's the one who's being persecuted here and again he just has his blinders on he refuses to realize that he is the one he is the government here and he's the one who is trampling on the religious liberty rights of the students well we heard him say during that clip that I'm not going to conform to any man's norm that's that's kind of the lingo you hear in a sermon yeah in the Bible do not conform to the any man's norm but as an elective elected public servant he does have to conform to the Constitution that's right and so and that was also it was that was a theme of his speech was not and yeah to him that's just either conforming or political correctness is his shorthand for following the law in this case so that's his defiance now I believe we also have a clip of Dupree or as that was just on he's a graphic yeah so you can read there on the on the screen exactly what it is I can tell you personally I will not conform to my policies that to any policies that are put into place that are going to censor me cen SOR me it should be I will not conform to anything anyway he's he's bragging that he's going to be he's going to just obey God's law rather than then are the USA well yes and this has been the case for four years now where he is absolutely recalcitrant he's defiant he's saying you can tell me what the law is I don't care I don't want to hear it if you give me that microphone I'm promoting Christian yeah and that's why the district is absolutely stuck here I think they are going whether it's from us or from us someone else they are going to face a loser of a lawsuit if they don't stop him because he's announcing I know the law and I'm gonna break the law he's announcing that yeah that's pretty open uh that's right so yeah do we have some some questions well if there's a do you know how to work this or do I work this time you're the you're the man UPS is the miracle of here we go questions for June nineteenth s today linda s ESS asks can FFRF post the letter from the students on facebook yeah well yeah and i think yeah absolutely we can do that and it's also you can find it in i in the news coverage of this the the local newspaper is the post current I believe post Christian Post Crescent that's it yeah they link to the letter as well so you can find it there but yeah I think that that is a reasonable request we and if you'd like him at Mehta's Friendly Atheist he has a story a few days ago that also links to that letter but we'll put it up somewhere on our website Faye Thompson if this happens at my school what can I do I know we've had pastors give speeches in previous years is there any way you can send a letter before my graduation so I don't have to listen to their fire and brimstone nonsense do we have a mechanism for that here potentially yeah so we have on our on our website there is a spot you can go where it says report a state Church complaint so if you see an impending violation and you think it makes sense for us to get out in front of it and tell the district hey we think this is happening please make sure that you you fix it ahead of time we absolutely can send those letters now we're not going to send a letter just because it might happen we need of course some indication that's actually going to happen but if you were told by an administrator or a teacher that this is the plan this pastor is going to be speaking and you you think they're going to be using that space to to promote religion then absolutely reach out to FFRF go to our website and we can we can talk to the superintendent try to get that fixed ahead of time and it's it's great to do that when you can because then you're in a much stronger posture of course where you can say like in this case of Appleton the district should have known there's no reason they should have let this happen whereas what tends to happen more commonly is it surprises you where it's um it's either not a minister it's just a random teacher a random person who comes up and then it happens where they are promoting religion then we hear about it reach out to the district and the district can say oh we had no way of knowing so if you get a complaint from a student who says help they're gonna pray at my graduation next Tuesday can we get a letter off in time we potentially sure can so sometimes the very day right that's right yeah if there is something especially when it's that immediate we we have a really well oiled machine between our intake team and our we call our strategic response team Rapid Response to identify these very time-sensitive issues get them to the right attorney and say this needs to go out immediately and a lot of times it's within a couple hours that we can throw this together get it out there and get the the issue sorted out so you mail a physical letter but also email that's right so that's what were able to email it to them get them to them immediately and if it's really urgent we might even call the strict and say we just sent you an email we need you to address this right now all right good okay so here's another Tyler James Ernst er thanks for watching the show Tyler how can we change the minds of people who think it's not only OK to integrate church and state but who believe that that is how our country was founded hmm well we saw the ad for Andrews book at the beginning of the show the founding myth why Christian nationalism is on America so so Tyler we do we can't educate and we have FA cues about this there are books about this and if you need somebody to be educated let us know we can send you links we can send you a copy of Andrew sidles new book or show you how to how they can acquire that book so you'll hear it all the time if you listen to Christian radio that it was in god we trust' in one nation under God in judgment instead so help me God or you know so Andrew and others have done a great job of debunking this myth that we were founded as a Christian nation yeah and the book is definitely a deep dive into the history of it but if you if you want a quicker version of it quick reputations - some of the common talking points you can find those online pretty readily I think with the the various people we're talking about in YouTube clips and debates and their articles they've written you can see a lot of the just the simple reputations when people say this is a Christian nation or the types of things that that people we wouldn't say like pseudo historian David Barton is just notorious for putting things out there that support that narrative but are not supported by historical reality and he's even had to admit that some of those were he didn't say i fabricated them but i think he said well i didn't go to the original source there actually is no original source he's blaming someone else for his mistake right but and also the book that he wrote that was pulled by the old publisher for basic truths not being there he's still selling David Barton so if anybody throws David Barton at you you can just laugh yeah but yeah I think that unfortunately it is a scattershot approach that they usually take so it's hard to convince them because if someone is is just committed to believing that Christianity is the is the nation's identity it is hard to shake someone from that you can throw the law at them you can throw history at them you can show them that the person they learned this from is totally not reputable but at the end of the day if they don't want to be convinced they won't be and I think you need to play the numbers game just leave that alone at some point fighting is just creating more problems than it's worth and you have to go and try to educate more people you can't win everybody else besides it would be a bad idea if we were a Christian nation women would not be allowed to vote women would not be able to take any positions of leadership there's all sorts of horrible things about being a Christian nation that it's a good thing we're not like nation well end up found a big premise of Andrews book the founding principles of the United States and things we think of as core American values are often just in direct contradiction to Christian law into the the old and new testaments oh yeah the consent of the governed for example right now which is right in the Declaration you know that's all that's an anti biblical idea so so we're running out of time here it looks like arena is it I offer Joffe IO FF II at my kids school they sang a religious song it was so uncomfortable to be in that audience our schools allowed to do this yeah so this is a big question I think we've done a scan atheist shows on this before it's actually the most common complaint that we get at FFRF is on religious music and it's it's tricky only because what we mentioned the opening of the show so much early music especially happen to have a religious character where if you if you're studying Bach for instance so much of his going to be you know his mass in B minor and some of my jump in and say oh that's that's religious you shouldn't have that or Handel's Messiah I mean it's like well yeah it's religious but this is a huge piece in the history of music you if you cut out all of the religious music you're not going to get a thorough music education so the the the basic rule you need to have a music curriculum that is designed to educate if you have a music teacher who is intentionally inserting one religions songs over and over again and despair or if the songs are overtly devotional they don't really have a lot of a lot of music education value they're just all about praise so it's stuff like Jesus loves me this I know you know you don't need to learn that in a public school music education curriculum but so you really have to look at the specific facts of how how devotional is it is it a mixture of religious and secular songs and what is the history of this teacher of music director so there is no short and sweet answer to all there was religious song is that permissible unfortunately it's the classic law school answer so you're looking at the intention basically what is their intention we would not complain for example if a holiday concert had one Christmas Carol mixed in with a whole bunch of other holiday music that's right but if the whole program was Christmas carols and especially if it were being held in a church well then obviously we would complain about that so if it's like you say if it's educational yeah we should include a you know a Jewish tune and a Christian tune and maybe a Kwanzaa whatever is there a Kwanzaa tune then that's good that's educational it's showing diversity realm so wait a minute push the wrong button here all right here we go Steve larch couldn't it be argued that the mere invitation of a pastor to a graduation is an overstep or do they have to proselytize yeah that is a very good question and I would actually play the contrary in here I I certainly understand where you would be coming from when you say oh we're inviting a pastor what do you think he's gonna say this is already a problem without knowing it ahead of time but you do have to be careful that you there is basically there's a slippery slope here that sometimes there's a slippery slope fallacy but other times that's there's something two of them and I think this is one of those cases where if you a rule that said pastors are always prohibited from speaking at public school events no matter what that is a problem that is getting close to saying if you are a Christian you cannot ever speak at public school events or for that matter if you are an atheist you can't speak at public school events and all of these are our problems basically the the short answer of it is you can't prohibit someone from speaking just because of what their religious affiliation is there should be no religious test for public office baby that's right so if you have a pastor who is committed it understands law and is committed to giving a secular message and they can be trusted to do that there is no legal problem with letting them up there and I for instance I've seen a lot of rabbis who they are are really good at this you know they even though they will give religious speeches to congregations they are very cognizant of state church separation because they're in the minority and so when they get invited to speak at government events they they know how to do that in a legal way so but by inviting a pastor of a local church isn't the school district giving some prestige or cachet to that local church advertising them mean isn't there a little bit of that going on potentially so yeah they're there you do have to look at the specifics and if there was a partnership between the school and a particular church for instance that was this regular ongoing relationship where they said well you know every graduation we invite someone from the First Lutheran Church to come now suddenly this looks like a problem the the school needs to be careful not to send any indication that they are endorsing a particular Church particular religious view but if you have someone speaking you say hey wait a minute this person's a pastor is that gonna already get you over the line no looks like we got about two minutes Bruce is that right last last question Eric Robinson can pastor Dupree be fired from the school board what will happen if he keeps ignoring the law yeah that's a really good question so this is a strange circumstance where he's not a teacher he's not an administrator so they can't just easily fire him he's an elected official so in Wisconsin you would need to have a recall election to actually get him off of the board and that's not likely to happen so what what's going to happen if he keeps violating the law is they can't fire him but they can like we've mentioned before they can ban him from speaking at district events they can I censor censor him they can pass policies that are related to it and ultimately if he continues to do it what actually would happen from a legal perspective is he could be sued in his individual capacity normally government actors have what's called qualified immunity but you could lose that if you are flagrantly violating the law you know it's illegal and your government employer is telling you don't do this and then you just keep doing it anyway you can get sued where your personal bank account is gonna have him reimburse the legal fees of the person wouldn't the school board itself also be liable if they didn't take the proper steps yes and we have sued School Boards we had we had a successful lawsuit in California yeah over a school board that was preaching and proselytize and we won and they'll and they had to spend what how many quarter of a million dollars a quarter million dollars defending a losing lawsuit yeah so the school board itself could be liable to the legal action if they're not taking proper steps it'd be kind of like having an anti-harassment policy at your workplace if the leaders don't protect and take things seriously they could be liable as well so that's right yeah and that was Chino Valley California there it was multiple members of the school board which is why it turned into this huge case here the it's one rogue member so hopefully the school district will do the right thing so I guess we're out of time thanks Ryan thanks for doing all the hard all the heavy lifting on this issue and thank you for watching our show that's our show for today if f4fs ask an atheist on facebook live we invite you to become a member of FFRF if you're not already you can help us in this vital work to keep state and shirt separate and to educate the public about the views of the nuns the non theist atheist and agnostics visit our web page you can get there at FFRF dot org or pick up the telephone you can dial 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Channel: FFRF

Views: 2,471

Rating: 4.9408865 out of 5

Keywords: Freedom From Religion Foundation, FFRF, Appleton Wisconsin, Prayer at graduations, religious graduation, graduation, atheism, atheist, religious songs graduation, is prayer at graduation legal, preacher at graduation

Id: a1UmZtgf0Ik

Length: 39min 58sec (2398 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 19 2019