A Great Disappointment from Ohio

On Tuesday, the Ohio Supreme Court affirmed the lower courts in upholding the Mount Vernon City School District's termination of 8th-grade science teacher John Freshwater. (If you missed the background of my involvement with this case, click here and here.)

A "loss" was the expected result, at least before the oral arguments last February. But the great disappointment is that the Ohio Supreme Court disposed of the case without ruling on its core, substantive constitutional issues--whether or not Mr. Freshwater "injected his personal religious beliefs into the classroom" by allowing his students to critically examine the evidence for and against evolution theories. Instead, the Court decided the case based solely on the narrow, subsidiary issue of "insubordination."

The insubordination allegation stems from a principal's order for Mr. Freshwater to remove certain religious items from his classroom, including some book covers that listed the Ten Commandments, some posters quoting from Proverbs and Confucious, and, most importantly, Mr. Freshwater's personal Bible, which he often read quietly during his own free time, when students were not in the classroom.

Mr. Freshwater responded to the order by removing everything mentioned except for his personal Bible (which he purposefully refused to remove) and a poster behind his desk which depicted President George W. Bush and Colin Powell in the Cabinet Room with bowed heads (which he was never instructed to remove). Mr. Freshwater had also checked out two school library books--an Oxford Bible and Jesus of Nazareth, which investigators found strewn among papers, boxes, and films on a table in his personal work area.

Interestingly enough, the Ohio Supreme Court found that the order for Mr. Freshwater to remove his personal Bible from his desk was a violation of Mr. Freshwater's Free Exercise rights under the First Amendment (this part is a big win!). But the presence of the George Bush poster--which, incidentally, he had received from the school office and was hanging in at least 4 other classrooms at the time--and the religious school library books constituted "insubordination."

The decision was 4-3, and two of the three dissenting Justices wrote scathing dissents. Justice Pfeifer may have summed it up best:

"John Freshwater is not today’s big loser, because he fought to prove that he actually followed the rules, that he taught well, and that over a lifetime of dedication to the students in his classrooms he made a positive contribution to their lives. That proof is uncontroverted. In that most important measure of public education, John Freshwater is a winner and his final departure is a loss to the Mount Vernon schools."

I am hard at work now on a "Motion for Reconsideration." Please join me and many others in praying that perhaps one Justice, who may have been on the fence, will perceive the errors that I will be pointing out and choose to give the case one last look.

I am so grateful that God is a God of Justice, and that one day all things will be set right.

If you would like to read the majority and dissenting opinions, you can find them here.