Teachers may limit student religous speech in the classroom, federal court finds.

Public school teachers have no constitutional obligation to allow students to present religious messages to their classmates as part of their classroom work, a federal district court has held.

U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Rodriguez ruled Dec. 30 that Grace Oliva, a first grade teacher in Medford, N.J., acted correctly when she refused to let Zachary Hood read aloud from The Beginner's Bible.

Students in Oliva's class were rewarded for reading skills by being allowed to bring a book and read it to the class. Finding a religious work inappropriate for a religiously diverse public school classroom, she asked the student to read it to her privately.

Hood's mother Carol sued the school district and state education officials, with assistance from the Rutherford Institute, a Charlottesville, Va.-based Religious Right legal group.

Rodriguez was unimpressed by the claim. The teacher "properly exercised her editorial control over the students' reading selections to ensure the material was appropriate for their educational level," he observed. He noted that impressionable first graders might easily assume that the teacher approved of the religious literature if she allowed the student to read it.

The judge rejected a claim by Hood's attorneys that the teacher's action violated Zachary's free speech rights and free exercise of religion and established a "religion of secularism."

Noting that a classroom is not an "open forum," Rodriguez observed, "Public schools are not hostile to religion. Any student who wishes to say grace over lunch or appeal for divine intervention during a test has that right. Students also are not precluded from expressing their religious views in assignments.... [Zachary] was just not permitted to express the religious beliefs contained in his work to his classmates through the medium of the public school. The school did not forbid him from practicing his religion, it merely chose to tread lightly around creating the impression that it endorsed his religious views. It did so within the boundaries of the Constitution."

The Rutherford Institute is taking the C.H.v. Oliva decision to the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals.

In other religion-and-schools developments:

* Utah: Rachel Bauchman's complaint about a public high school choir director's promotion of Christianity has lost another round in federal court. The U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals voted 6-6 Jan. 28 not to review an appellate panel ruling against Bauchman. Bauchman charges that West High School choir director Richard Torgerson, a devout Mormon, has a long-running pattern of promoting Christianity through his public school position in Salt Lake City. (Bauchman v. West High School)

* New York: The Jamestown, N.Y., School Board voted 6-1 Jan. 24 against allowing a Christian motivational group to put on a student assembly at the local high school. According to the Buffalo News, the "Power Team" presents weightlifting performances that include messages against drugs and alcohol. Although the program at the school would be ostensibly secular, the Power Team's February visit to the area was sponsored by the Abundant Life Church. Other events would be evangelistic in character. The Rev. Rodney Mullins, pastor of Abundant Life, urged the "Christian community to remember this at the time of the school board elections."