PUBLIC MARKS with tags school & court

A federal court has issued an order that will prevent a New Jersey school from censoring students' Christian musical selections in future talent shows. The Alliance Defense Fund said the order comes down in favor of an elementary school student who, when she was a second-grader in May 2005, had been chosen to participate in the competition, and then picked "Awesome God," made famous by the late singer-songwriter Rich Mullins, to perform. Officials at Frenchtown Elementary School denied her permission, a decision endorsed by the board of education, citing not only the song's religious content but its "proselytizing" nature.

Attorneys for The Rutherford Institute have filed a civil rights lawsuit in defense of the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights of a seventh grader who was ordered by Maryland middle school officials to stop reading her Bible during free time at school or face disciplinary action. Institute attorneys have asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland to declare that prohibiting students from reading Bibles or other religious texts during their free time is unconstitutional.

A federal court of appeals unanimously struck down a Florida school board policy barring students from distributing religious literature on campus. Represented by the public-interest group Liberty Counsel, student Michelle Heinkel of Cypress Lake Middle School in Fort Myers had sought permission to distribute religious and pro-life literature about the "Day of Remembrance," set aside to remember unborn children killed by abortion.

An Indiana judge fed up with teenage traffic violators is kicking them in the seat -- the driver's seat. Porter Superior Judge Julia Jent is sentencing the ticketed teens to the embarrassment of riding the school bus, if they are found guilty in her courtroom. The judge, said she knew she had reached the teen when the girl started crying outside her courtroom. With that, she figured she found the right punishment. "Oh my God, you would have thought I gave her and her mother the death penalty," Jent told the paper.

Compare and contrast... In Dallas, a school district strikes the words "In God We Trust" from the photo of an enlarged nickel on a yearbook cover for fear of offending students of differing religions. In California, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals (the one that outlawed the Pledge of Allegiance for its reference to God) approved putting public school students through Muslim role-playing exercises.