The Des Moines Register reports:
Dale Halferty, who has taught industrial arts at Guthrie Center High School for three years, was placed on paid leave Monday after he acknowledged to district officials that he told [a] student he could not build [a Wiccan] altar in class.“But this kid was practicing his religion during class time, and I don’t agree[," said Halferty.]
Halferty said he previously told another student he could not build a cross in shop class because he believes in the separation of church and state. “I don’t want any religious symbols in the shop,” he said.
His viewpoint: “We as Christians don’t get to have our say during school time, so why should he?” …
Halferty said he … decided allowing the student to make the altar “was wrong on every level.”
“It scares me. I’m a Christian,” he said. “This witchcraft stuff — it’s terrible for our kids. It takes kids away from what they know, and leads them to a dark and violent life. We spend millions of tax dollars trying to save kids from that.”
Halferty’s actions strike me as quite wrong: Students shouldn’t be discriminated against in shop class based on the religiosity of their projects (whether the projects are crosses or Wiccan altars). Nothing in Establishment Clause caselaw, or broader “separation of church and state” principles, requires this. Just as there’s no constitutional problem with students’ using school property for student-run religious group meetings, so there’s no constitutional problems with their doing the same to build their own personally chosen religious projects.
Now of course the teacher may reasonably limit the topics, for instance if a shop teacher asks people to make bookcases (in which category crosses and tables wouldn’t fit, though bookcases decorated with crosses would), or if an English teacher asks people to write reports on 18th-century novels (in which category the Bible wouldn’t fit). And when the student is speaking to other students, who are required to listen, the teacher might likewise be able to exclude pro- or anti-religious advocacy.
But this is shop class; the student is making his own thing, not lecturing to classmates about why they should convert to Christianity or Wicca. I see no basis here for the sort of discrimination against religion that the teacher apparently engaged in, whether it is motivated by anti-Wiccan sentiment, or a misguided notion of “separation of church and state.”
Likewise, the petition signed by 70 students (out of 185 total) “saying they didn’t want witchcraft practiced at the school” strikes me as no more significant than a hypothetical petition demanding that Christian clubs not be allowed at the school, or for that matter that all religious clubs not be allowed (while nonreligious noncurricular clubs are allowed). If you don’t like another’s religion, you don’t have to practice it. You don’t have to engage in the religious practices that he brings to school. You don’t have to read the religious books that he brings to school (Halferty said “the student kept returning to class with a book of witchcraft”). And you don’t have to worship using the religious objects that he makes in shop class, in a process that is just as educational to him as making a nonreligious table would be to a non-Wiccan student. Enjoy your own religion — or your own nonreligious philosophy or set of hobbies or construction preferences — and let others enjoy theirs.
Thanks to Prof. Howard Friedman (Religion Clause) for the pointer.
Arthur Kirkland says:
“My fairy tale can beat up your fairy tale.” — Dale Halferty.
March 3, 2010, 7:25 pmthe few and the plenty says:
This is a pretty weighty subject for a shop teacher to be expected to navigate through.
But I disagree with the idea that the student should be left to create whatever he desires-that the student should be left to create whatever he wants. That teacher would be need to supervise the construction of the altar and that would imply his approval. And this would be something he doesn’t approve.
March 3, 2010, 7:29 pmMatthew Carberry says:
Would it matter if prayers (audible) and rituals (involving stuff) were necessary during the construction of the table?
To imbue it with the appropriate qualities and such?
March 3, 2010, 7:32 pmGuy says:
This is an unfortunate example of public confusion over the meaning and requirements of the Establishment Clause. It doesn’t help that the Supreme Court’s precedents are themselves somewhat confused.
March 3, 2010, 7:38 pmJ. Aldridge says:
Even more confusing is the fact Congress attempted 7 times between 1871 1890 to amend the constitution to restrict the states in religious matters.
They all failed, but everyone seems fine that the court can amend the constitution with the approval of no one and without anything in writing.
Sad.
March 3, 2010, 7:48 pmtarheel says:
The teacher’s mistaken view is an unfortunate by-product of 30 years of hearing the all-too-common meme that the courts/liberals/boogeyman have “banned God from the public square.”
March 3, 2010, 7:50 pmDangerMouse says:
He said: “We as Christians don’t get to have our say during school time, so why should he?”
I guess he thought that he was doing the right thing, and following the law, on the theory that if a Christian couldn’t do it than neither could a Wiccan. And in his view, he thought that a Christian wouldn’t be permitted to do what the Wiccan was doing.
It just goes to show how idiotic the Supreme Court is on the establishment clause, and how their idiotic rulings work in the real world. There’s no way that a religion is going to be “established” by the Christian teacher being a Christian or the Wiccan student being a Wiccan. The whole edifice is built on a bunch of B.S.
March 3, 2010, 8:00 pmColin says:
Yeah, the teacher is in over his head.
March 3, 2010, 8:02 pmTCO says:
The kid is just trying to provoke. Would a “noose” also be OK? After all, it’s just “speech”.
March 3, 2010, 8:08 pmOwen H. says:
Which kid, TCO? The one that wanted to make a cross?
Why bring a noose into it?
March 3, 2010, 8:24 pmBobVB says:
Isn’t there an issue of faith that could be the cause of some problems? I agree if a student is allowed to pick their project they should be able to make a cross if they want – some might use it as a religious artifact, another might use theirs for a convenient posterior scratcher. Likewise the altar might end up as a Wiccan ceremonial site or a place to put a laptop.
But if either involves religious practices or special handling because of its supposed religiousity during construction – must that be allowed? Can the student with the cross demand it not be put on the floor or not stored upside down? Can the Wiccan chant a ‘blessing be’ on every joint & laminate of the altar’s construction?
What happens if the object brings religion into the classroom, what should the teacher do then?
March 3, 2010, 8:26 pmSuperSkeptic says:
Either kid. What if instead of a noose he wanted to make a big cock and balls sculpture? At some point it poses a distraction. Which is why I disagree with this:
Religiosity can be just as distracting as obscenity. Moreover, it sounds like the guy did everything he could not to discriminate. Shouldn’t he be permitted to ban religiosity all together if he so chooses in order to maintain discipline in his classroom? If not constitutionally mandated, at least not constitutionally proscribed.
March 3, 2010, 9:21 pmDavid Schwartz says:
Tough. If you want to be a teacher, you may have to teach and supervise things you don’t approve of. Suppose I want to be a teacher and I believe John Wayne caused World War II. Is it fair to ask me to teach other “theories” about the start of World War II, which would imply my approval of those theories?
If you want to be a teacher, you have to teach and supervise whatever needs teaching and supervising. That’s your job.
March 3, 2010, 9:23 pmresh says:
Would a swastika be ok, allowing that his religion was, say, an Aryan Christianity sect? And what if his teacher was Jewish? Would that shift the equation?
March 3, 2010, 9:23 pmdeenk says:
As it is not official speech, I don’t see why students can’t incorporate religious imagery into their projects. As a teacher, I think I would express general reluctance to judge the workmanship of a religious object. Nevertheless, if the student is willing for the object to be so graded, then why not?
March 3, 2010, 10:01 pmDavid Schwartz says:
I don’t think it should, but under current law it likely would. I guess we’ll find out when we see how this case of a student sent home for wearing an anti-Islam T-shirt plays out.
March 3, 2010, 10:52 pmAnderson says:
Religiosity can be just as distracting as obscenity.
Except, SS, that one of America’s core values is learning to live with others’ religious differences. Whereas obscenity, pretty much by legal definition, is what we don’t expect to have to tolerate in others.
This should’ve been a teaching moment, in which the teacher explained that the price of freely exercising our own religion is tolerating other religions.
Instead, the teacher turned it into a Fox News segment.
March 3, 2010, 10:59 pmShelbyC says:
Isn’t the whole point of the free exercise clause that the govt can’t ban religiosity?
March 3, 2010, 11:44 pmStrict says:
This stupid teacher sure does show how stupid the Supreme Court is. [what?]
March 3, 2010, 11:49 pmarbitrary aardvark says:
It is laudatory of the guy to try to keep religion out of the classroom, with a non-discriminatory neutral policy. Public schools have a history of imposing protestant
March 3, 2010, 11:59 pmchristianity on a captive audience, with one result being that catholics took their kids out of those schools, but were taxed to support the protestant public schools.
he has to try to walk a fine line between avoiding establishment and not interfering in free exercise.
Religion. SEC. 3. The general assembly shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; nor shall any person be compelled to attend any place of worship, pay tithes, taxes, or other rates for building or repairing places of worship, or the maintenance of any minister, or ministry.
Right now the guy is getting a free paid vacation. You guys are a bunch of antidisestalishmentarianists?
R Gould-Saltman says:
I’m hearing a pair of jackasses butting heads, and the older jackass blinking first.
NO indication that kid stood up in shop class and said, on day three of the project, “Oh, I’ll need to desecrate a Host and put fresh virgin’s blood on this oak panel before I run it through the power plane”.
. . . I know a little comparative religion, and a little art history, and some woodworking, and it’s not at all clear to me that if I’d been the teacher, and someone showed me a set of plans, or even a drawing, I’d be able to say “Oh, that’s not a cabinet! You want to build a WICCAN altar, that’s what THAT is! Why didn’t you say so?”
. . . unless he came to me (as it sounds like kid did) with a picture that said “WICCAN ALTAR” in big letters on it, and kid said, repeatedly (as it sounds like he in effect said until teach’ rose to the bait): “I want to build this WICCAN ALTAR, the kind you use to do WITCHCRAFT, out of this-here book on WITCHCRAFT!”
Which raises the same question, in a different context, that the Chicago custody contempt case raises: if someone’s apparently deliberately acting like an offensive jackass, does the fact that they claim to be doing so for a religious reason reduce their culpability?
March 4, 2010, 12:55 amR Gould-Saltman says:
Oh. My. Just went and Google-searched “Wiccan Altars” and found an online supplier, whose extensive stock looks remarkably like the cabinetry stuff the not-so-skilled guys in my 9th grade shop class built, but with “Wiccan”, “Pagan” or “Faerie” designs woodburnt onto the tops!
March 4, 2010, 1:06 amEvilDave says:
No they haven’t banned “God” from the public square, just the Christian God. Allah and your Twilight Wiccan gods, etc. are A-OK.
March 4, 2010, 2:50 amHeck you can even be required to “be a Muslim” for a few days in many public schools. Unfortunately, none of the students have taken the opportunity to behead their teachers. Hence they missed out on a truly multi-cultural experience.
D.O. says:
Why is it not up to the teacher what is allowed in his class and what is not? School is a place for education, not self-expression (unless a teacher wants this expression as part of they educational strategy, and of course, within the limits). The teacher was misguided in his reasoning? So what? Aren’t we all, in one way or another. It is different matter if his rules were favoring one religion over the other or a non-religious sentiment over all religions. But if his rule is: gimme a religiously-neutral project, just leave him alone.
March 4, 2010, 3:19 amMaryG says:
And stay away from the mandatory use — oh, with a minorority opt out — of Tarot cards in required 1L classrooms. We’re here to ‘em teach law, not to dabble in the occult or educate them on the foolishness of such superstitions.
Gotta say: the “discussion” (and arms race?) engendered of allowing them to start building “Wiccan altars” and the like in shop class, clearly shows that on the practical end of things … you weren’t educated in the typical American public school, eh Ev??
(I kid, I kid… but there’s something wrong with making a mockery of common-sense guys like the shop teachers; and telling him how to do his job. Stupid, really.) Why not let the kid develop his woodworking skills on something the teacher finds acceptable, and then let him build the Wiccan altar to practice his special religion on his own time. Of course, without the buddies there for the audience, making the sacrificial altar might not be such a show, gathering special attention in the classroom.
You’re green, EV. (Hey everyone: I’m Pastafarian! My religions requires I make a two-foot long idolic phallic totem. Heh heh! Stop discriminating! And remember: Parade at 1pm; Bring the Bong Hits for Jesus banner we made in Arts class. Rebellion man — they keep us locked up here mandatorily; we exploit every little “right” to make Wiccan altars and Phallic totems they permit.) Get it yet?
March 4, 2010, 4:48 amOwen H. says:
So making a threatening object, or an obscene one, is exactly the same as making a religious one?
Teacher was an idiot. Kid who wanted to make a cross should not have been prevented either.
March 4, 2010, 7:35 amOwen H. says:
Students aren’t prevented from praying in school, as long as it isn’t disruptive.
March 4, 2010, 7:36 amOwen H. says:
God hasn’t been banned. Straw man.
March 4, 2010, 7:37 amMartinned says:
That would be Justice Thomas’s in loco parentis approach. It isn’t as far out there as some of Thomas’s other ideas. It certainly has the benefit of being simple and relatively un-legalistic, which is why the courts in America will never go for it.
March 4, 2010, 8:25 amLymis says:
If the assignment was to make a piece of furniture, then the altar would be valid and the cross would not. If the assignment was to make whatever you wanted out of X amount of wood, then either should be allowed – although unless there was some pretty impressive inlay or joinery, a cross is a pretty basic piece and wouldn’t score high on degree of difficulty.
Don’t we need to know exactly what it was about the piece that qualified it as religious?
If it’s just the name, does the teacher have the right to do the same thing to a student who makes a bookcase, announcing that he intends to take it home to store his Bible collection? Or his porn, for that matter?
March 4, 2010, 9:15 amMCM says:
What, is it Samhain already?
March 4, 2010, 9:15 amASlyJD says:
I’m reminded of my high school and college English teachers restricting religious topics from the essays we were assigned. This was done so that the teacher could feel safe that the grade the student received was completely due to the quality of the work and not because of a difference of opinion or religious discrimination.
Perhaps those rules are equally restrictive?
March 4, 2010, 9:50 amiowan2 says:
Have’nt read all the posts, but this little bit of the article has been omitted
“After the student told him he was a practicing witch, Halferty said, he told the student he could work on his project but must keep any religious materials at home. He said the student kept returning to class with a book of witchcraft, which prompted him to tell the student he couldn’t build the altar in his class.”
Local accounts seem to identify the student as a trouble maker with a chip on his shoulder for the shop teacher. The student most likely could not explain the differences between wica and judeaism
So, dont know if this changes some opinions. I seems to me that legal scholars are confused over contradicting SCOTUS decisions, the probability that this shop teacher getting a fair shake are slim.
March 4, 2010, 10:29 amBobVB says:
Halferty told him he could work on his project – a table that would become the altar – provided he kept religious materials at home.
Which of course he can’t require especially since the ‘materials’ was just a book. Its a bit amazing that a teacher wouldn’t know that a child can carry a Bible, Koran, or whatever with them if they so choose.
A big part of the teacher’s problem is he expressed a definite prejudice against Wiccan in general in his subsequent statements:
“It scares me. I’m a Christian,” he said. “This witchcraft stuff – it’s terrible for our kids. It takes kids away from what they know, and leads them to a dark and violent life. We spend millions of tax dollars trying to save kids from that.”
As to what’s to be done, even the head of the I(owa)CLU simply says:
“The teacher may have good intentions. It’s a learning process. But he needs to respect that students can exercise their religious viewpoints within the context of an assignment.”
I mean the kid was making a table – what he was subsequently going to use it for is irrelevant. I agree the kid was most likely trying to bait the teacher and the teacher stupidly took the bait and set the hook deep – he’s just going to have to go through the trauma of having it removed before he gets tossed back and hopefully will be the wiser for it.
March 4, 2010, 10:53 amTitus says:
Professor, even if your analysis is correct (which, purely from a religion-clause standpoint it appears to be, sadly), the vast muddle over religious expressions in schools in recent decades have given almost everyone the impression that the law requires them to act as the teacher acted here. It’s somewhat disingenuous of us as a profession to create a briar patch, throw laymen into it, and then rake them over the coals when they get stuck.
March 4, 2010, 11:15 amJake from Iowa says:
For all of those who think this shop teacher was just confused about the application of the Establishent Clause, his true intentions are well documented in this article: http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20100304/NEWS/3040352/1001/NEWS/Teacher-suspended-for-denying-Wiccan-altar. He is clearly discriminating based upon religion.
March 4, 2010, 1:46 pmgrog says:
Someone misunderstands law, and this means that SCOTUS is to blame?
Do you also hold that accused criminals should be permitted to use ignorance of the law as an excuse?
March 4, 2010, 1:56 pmThe Wild Hunt » Quick Notes: Iowa’s Anti-Pagan Teacher, Proselytism, and the Seventh Principle says:
[...] school board for disciplinary action, turning himself into a would-be martyr for his faith. While anyone who understands law can see that Halferty is clearly in the wrong for his actions, I fear this is going to be held up as a case [...]
March 4, 2010, 2:05 pmTed says:
Is it? What if the ritual he was going to perform would call forth a great demon and destroy the town? Absurd, you say? But, “It scares me. I’m a Christian.”
Seriously though, if the kid was making a “rack,” i.e. torture table, don’t you think the the teacher would be justified in restricting it based upon “what he was subsequently going to use it for.” I’m generally in favor getting religion out of schools, but this is a case where the teacher’s explanation “after the fact” should not have clouded the practical rule that shop teachers should be allowed to approve or disapprove of what is made in class. It should be up to the kid to prove that other folks were allowed to make religious stuff and he was not, not vice versa.
I agree the teacher’s union should have shut that dude up; he made the kid’s case alot easier. The unions should instruct all teachers to recite the phrase, “I did it because I felt it was a distraction to the other students,” when questioned about anything. Even with the teacher’s inflammatory comments in the current case, I didn’t see any specific evidence that clearly indicated he was discriminating against Wiccans by allowing other religious projects.
Disingenuous? More like high comedy.
Don’t we? Can’t a criminal be acquitted if he proves the law is unclear, i.e. unconstitutionally vague? What happens when Supreme Court opinions are unconstitutionally vague? And if you don’t think SCOTUS’s First Amendment precedent is vague, you should really become a First Amendment lawyer. Then you could become unimaginably wealthy, or, more likely, you could come to recognize that First Amendment law is as vague as it gets.
March 4, 2010, 2:49 pmEvilDave says:
It appears the teacher had an absolute ban against religious articles regardless of what religion they involved. He did not favour Christianity, nor did he cause special problems for non-Christian religions.
Plus he let the kid keep working on the alter as long as he did the Wiccan articles outside of school (i.e. personal time). The kid kept violating this policy.
The guy seems to have built his his content-neutral no-religion policy based on the reporting and left/right talking points from the last 30 years.
Having a “no religious articles” policy seems to be a perfectly reasonable safe harbour stance.
The teacher is in a “damned if you do; damned if you don’t” situation.
March 4, 2010, 3:10 pmTeNosce says:
“This witchcraft stuff — it’s terrible for our kids. It takes kids away from what they know, and leads them to a dark and violent life…” ~ Dale Halferty
Calm down, Dale. Wicca doesn’t lead kids to a dark and violent life… It leads them to candle burns, bad music and oversized costume jewelry.
March 4, 2010, 4:35 pmDavid Schwartz says:
It sounds like this guy can’t separate his personal religious beliefs from his job responsibilities. He feels it’s his personal responsibility to suppress Wiccan beliefs and practices and sees no issue with using his position to do so.
March 4, 2010, 8:02 pmOwen H. says:
If a teacher tells a kid they can’t bring their Bible to school, is that ok too?
It doesn’t matter if the kid can or cannot give a reasoned explanation of their faith. Many people seem to have trouble with that.
March 4, 2010, 8:13 pmEvilDave says:
It sounds like someone has poor reading comprehension skills.
March 4, 2010, 8:36 pmreadery says:
I usually favor a robust Free Exercise Clause, but I’m not certain this isn’t a “play in the joints” situation once we take into account that the school and the taxpayers are paying for the wood and all the shop supplies. Certainly nothing in the constitution prevents the school from allowing it. But this seems more than accommodation, because the taxpayers are footing a significant bill. I’m not sure why they can’t decide they don’t want to foot that bill if they don’t want to, so long as they apply the same policy to all religion projects.
I agree that a possible difficulty is that religious and secular objects can be fungible; similar objects can be one person’s alter and another’s cabinet or table.
I also agree that the fact that religious rituals are involved doesn’t make it constitutionally impermissable. The fungibiity of religious and secular uses illustrates this. The school can’t prevent a student from praying (for example saying grace) over a shop “table”, so what difference does it make if we take an object with similar design and call it an “alter”?
March 5, 2010, 1:14 amour founding truth says:
The framers back the teacher one-hundred percent. The first amendment prohibits only an established church. If I’m not mistaken, the framers imprisoned witches. Separation of church and state is easy to refute.
March 5, 2010, 2:55 pmgrog says:
Ted: Don’t we? Can’t a criminal be acquitted if he proves the law is unclear, i.e. unconstitutionally vague? What happens when Supreme Court opinions are unconstitutionally vague? And if you don’t think SCOTUS’s First Amendment precedent is vague, you should really become a First Amendment lawyer.
I didn’t say unconstitutionally vague, I said the teacher misunderstood the law. Which is clearly true. Accused criminals are not acquitted because they misunderstand or are unaware of laws.
While I’m not a lawyer of any sort, I don’t think the laws are vague (or, at least, any more vague than, for instance, 4th amendment law, or tax law). I do think they’re complicated, but again, not so complicated as any number of other legal topics.
I certainly do wish that law were more comprehensible to lay people, but I also see no reason to single out first amendment law as particularly incomprehensible. Cops seem to deal quite well with a sort of flow-chart behavior for dealing with forth amendment law; why should we not expect teachers to be capable of something similar for first amendment law? Neither class of public servant has to have a nuanced view of the history of precedent to be capable of that.
March 5, 2010, 6:01 pmOwen H. says:
Sounds like that might be you with poor comprehension.
As an aside, I find this appalling-
Since when did religious belief become subject to popular vote? Can they vote to keep out the Jews, too?
March 5, 2010, 8:41 pmMaryG says:
For clarification:
Does the practice of Wiccanry or Judiasm require them to build sacrificial altars on pubic taxpayers time and dime? If the goal is to educate them as to woodworking, provide the tools and let the teacher define the parameters of the project.
Your religion requires you to make an altar? Then use the skills the public schools are teaching, and build one on your own time.
The right to crate a Wiccan altar during shop class is not constitutionally guaranteed, and you haven’t convinced me it’s a required tenet of the religion. This is silly, slippery slope playing.
And we all know the answer if his little altar contained a Swaztika how quickly it would be hauled out of the shop class for violating anti Semitism rights, or how quickly the tools would be removed from the classroom if they were contributing to building a bookcase with a Christian cross symbol on it, or a creche.
Don’t micromanage the police, or the teachers, unless you have a verrrrry good reason. They should be setting the project boundaries, not idealistic law profs creating “rights” to build occult or religion materials in the public schools.
March 6, 2010, 4:14 amBobVB says:
Read the articles, he was building a table that he said he was going to use as a Wiccan altar. So the project was 100% ok for class UNTIL it was conceptually viewed as an altar by an instructor that has made it clear in public statements that he is prejudice against the Wiccan religion.
How can anyone actually be defending this obvious violation of established student religious rights? It would have been just as wrong if the student was making a table with a cross inlaid in the veneer or whatever.
March 6, 2010, 4:39 amOwen H. says:
Actually, I am pretty sure we don’t know the answer. And I am unsure what it has to do with this anyway. Are you suggesting that since you assume someone different would be treated worse, it is ok to treat this kid badly?
March 6, 2010, 9:45 pm