Christian candy caners. (Making a Difference).

During last year's holiday season, seven members of the Love and Insight for Eternity (L.I.F.E.) Bible Club at Westfield High School in Westfield, Massachusetts, decided to pass out candy canes accompanied by folded cards that, among other things, explained the confection's Christian significance.

"According to legend," the message read, "there was a candy maker who wanted to invent a candy that was a witness to Christ.... First of all, he used a hard candy because Christ is the Rock of Ages. This hard candy was shaped so that it would resemble a 'J' for Jesus or a shepherd's staff. He made it white to represent the purity of Christ. Finally, a red stripe was added to represent the blood of Christ that was shed for the sins of the world and three thinner red stripes for the stripes he received on our behalf when the Roman soldiers whipped him. The flavor of the candy is peppermint, which is similar to hyssop. Hyssop is in the mint family and was used in the Old Testament for purification and sacrifice." The card also included Bible verses, a religious message, and a prayer.

The students hoped to distribute the emblems to classmates on December 19th, the day before Christmas break. Club representatives met with school Principal Thomas Daley to secure his permission, but Daley turned them down, reportedly because he thought the Christian theme might offend other students. He had rejected a similar request the year before but later agreed to permit distribution of the candy canes if any accompanying message merely read "Happy Holidays," "Season's Greetings," or some similarly innocuous salutation.

Westfield Public Schools Superintendent Thomas McDowell backed the principal's position. In a December 18th letter to Mathew Staver, president and general counsel of the civil liberties legal defense and education organization Liberty Counsel, McDowell asserted: "We do not allow students to distribute non-school curriculum or activity-related literature of any kind directly to other students on school grounds."

Nevertheless, believing that it would be wrong to water down their Christian message and that their God-given, constitutionally protected rights supersede school district policy, the Bible Club students went ahead with the project. As for any school sanctions they might face for doing so, club co-leader Stephen Grabowski, 16, told the January 1st Boston Globe that "we're not backing down. We really believe that Jesus Christ is Lord, and we're prepared to fight. They picked the wrong people to step on."

When they returned to school on January 2nd, the students were summoned to Principal Daley's office and given one-day, in-school suspensions. The penalties were never enforced, however. On January 13th, six of the seven youngsters, represented by Liberty Counsel's Mathew Stayer, filed suit in federal court against the City of Westfield, Principal Daley, and Superintendent McDowell. The suit asked the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts to issue an injunction prohibiting the school from either disciplining the students or enforcing its constitutionally questionable literature distribution policies.

On March 17th, Senior District Court Judge Frank Freedman issued a 67-page "memorandum and order" in favor of the students, holding that the school policy prohibiting distribution of printed material on school grounds without permission did indeed violate students' First Amendment guarantees.

Commenting on the decision, attorney Stayer told reporters: "This case strikes a mighty blow for student free speech. The Judge made it abundantly clear that the Free Speech Clause [of the U.S. Constitution] clearly protects a student's right to hand a religious message to a fellow student."

Claire Thompson, an attorney for Westfield High, said the school would revise its policies to abide by Judge Freedman's ruling.