united-states discrimination education legal-research first-amendment
Have there ever been examples of public school&#39;s restriction of community service being unlawful?
<p>My school's community service policy (while ambiguous throughout the whole thing) Seems to me to discriminate against not only religions, but my religion specifically. The particular clause I'm referring to states:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Your community service project must benefit a <em>group, organization, or person</em> <strong><em>outside</em> of your household, immediate and extended family.</strong> <em>Eagle Scout, Church-related or court-ordered</em> community service hours may <strong>not</strong> be used for this Project. <br><br> (Emphasis <strong>not</strong> mine)</p>
</blockquote>

<p>The particular portion of this clause, the last part; "<em>Eagle Scout, Church-related or court-ordered</em> community service hours may <strong>not</strong> be used for this Project." is what I'm at ends with. The project makes a specific statement to disallow all service associated with "Churches", in the same clause it refuses to accept projects being used for other purposes.</p>

<p>And to add confusion to the mess, the phrase, IMHO is unnecessarily ambiguous, stating "Church-Related" instead of being specific as to what is and isn't allowed. I've asked my guidance counselors as to what is and isn't allowed in terms of this, and they said to ask my PE teacher, as they (as per stated) are in charge of the Volunteer Community Service Project (VCSP). My PE teacher told me they can clarify questions during a pre-approval phase for the project. As I understand it, that phase goes like this:</p>

<ul>
<li>The student signs up for service or alerts the organization and receives permission to perform it.</li>
<li>The student goes to their PE teacher and asks if the project can be used for the VCSP</li>
<li>The student can ask questions about the VCSP (For some reason, only if they've already prepared a project)</li>
<li>The PE teacher either approves or denies the project, citing a reason if denied.</li>
</ul>

<p>This whole process makes no sense to me and seems completely illogical, so I figured that before I schedule any more projects that I find out if there are cases of similar organizations to my school losing similar cases to this.</p>

<h2>Some Details</h2>

<ul>
<li>The school is a public school, Located in Rhode Island (United States)</li>
<li>The Project is required to graduate</li>
<li>To my knowledge, the school has never had problems with policies before</li>
<li>I am a minor</li>
</ul>

<p><strong>Freedom of Religion Concerns</strong></p>

<p>I doubt that this policy would be held to be unlawful on First Amendment freedom of religion grounds. Indeed, such requirements <a href="http://www.coyotecommunications.com/stuff/community.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">usually exclude church-related service</a>.</p>

<p>Also, I don't see how this policy discriminates against your religion specifically. It seems on its face to apply to all religions equally.</p>

<p>Even if "Church-related" is read broadly to include both service that benefits a church, and also service that is organized by a church, that doesn't preclude you from coming up with some other kind of service that is neither of these things.</p>

<p>Why would you be prevented from coming up with service that is neither of these things when other students do not? </p>

<p>Unless you have also undertaken Holy Orders or something, in which case 100% of your time away from school would be devoted to your church, it is hard to see what the problem would be with this requirement for you as opposed to someone else. And, it would probably be improper for a public school to allow you to use religious activities to satisfy a graduation requirement - that would sound like an establishment clause violation.</p>

<p><a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/10-important-supreme-court-cases-about-education" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Some of the relevant U.S. Supreme Court cases</a> are:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p><em>Engel v. Vitale</em> (1962) and <em>Abington School District v. Schempp</em> (1963)</p>
  
  <p>This pair of cases shaped the modern understanding of how the
  Establishment Clause of the First Amendment constrains prayer in
  public schools. In Engel, the Court struck down a New York State rule
  that allowed public schools to hold a short, nondenominational prayer
  at the beginning of the school day. The Court decided that these
  prayers amounted to an “official stamp of approval” upon one
  particular kind of prayer and religious service, and said that, since
  teachers are agents of the federal government, the scheme violated the
  Establishment Clause.</p>
  
  <p>The reasoning in Engel was also applied in Schempp, in which the Court
  struck down a Pennsylvania policy that required all students to read
  10 Bible verses and say the Lord’s Prayer at the beginning of each
  day. While a student could get an exemption with a parent’s note, the
  Warren Court decided that this still amounted to an unconstitutional
  government endorsement of a particular religious tradition.</p>
  
  <p><em>Lemon v. Kurtzman</em> (1971)</p>
  
  <p>This case adjudicated a different sort of Establishment Clause
  challenge, where the controversy dealt with a statute providing
  financial support for teacher salaries and textbooks in parochial
  schools. The Burger Court unanimously decided that this financial aid
  scheme violated the Establishment Clause and delineated the governing
  precedent for Establishment Clause cases known as the Lemon test.
  Under Lemon, statutes (1) must have a secular legislative purpose; (2)
  must have primary effects that neither inhibit nor advance religion;
  and (3) cannot foster an “excessive government entanglement with
  religion.” The Court held that this scheme violated the third prong of
  the Lemon test.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Allowing Church-related community service projects could implicate both the second and third prongs of the <em>Lemon</em> test.</p>

<p>In a pertinent ruling, the Colorado Supreme Court <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/colorado-supreme-court-strikes-down-school-voucher-program/2015/06/29/a382768e-1e75-11e5-bf41-c23f5d3face1_story.html?utm_term=.d7c50d3e60ed" rel="nofollow noreferrer">upheld a state constitutional requirement that no public funds be used to assist religious organizations</a>, even if this prevented a facially neutral voucher program from treating religious and non-religious schools equally. The <a href="https://www.courts.state.co.us/userfiles/file/Court_Probation/Supreme_Court/Opinions/2013/13SC233.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">opinion in this 2015 case</a> reviews some of the relevant law. </p>

<p>A critical portion of the analysis is that aid to religious institutions must be limited to institutions that do not discriminate on the basis of religion and that supporting religious institutions at the K-12 level is more of a concern than doing so at the higher educational level. A Church, however, would (and should) discriminate on the basis of religion. </p>

<p><strong>In General</strong></p>

<p>There has been consideration of whether community service requirements, in general, are constitutional. Generally, <a href="http://www.wright-house.com/ac/papers97/Parr-ac1.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">courts have upheld the programs</a>. See also <a href="http://www.luc.edu/media/lucedu/law/centers/childlaw/childed/pdfs/2011studentpapers/byrne_reading_writing.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a>.</p>

<p>In particular, Rhode Island is in the 1st Circuit of the federal courts, which has expressly ruled that community service requirements are constitutional.</p>

<p>A <a href="http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1149&amp;context=lcp" rel="nofollow noreferrer">1999 law review article in the Duke Law Journal</a> considers the issue from several perspectives. So does a <a href="http://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2033&amp;context=llr" rel="nofollow noreferrer">1997 Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review</a> article. A 1916 case called <em>Butler v. Perry</em> is <a href="http://volokh.com/posts/1216846359.shtml" rel="nofollow noreferrer">a particularly strong precedent in favor of the proposition that mandatory service is constitutional</a>, despite arguments to the contrary under the 13th Amendment. The issue was discussed in the New York Times <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/23/nyregion/the-logic-of-mandatory-volunteerism.html?mcubz=1" rel="nofollow noreferrer">in a 2003 article</a>.</p>

<p>Both are concerned about the involuntary servitude aspect of the requirement, but given that school attendance may be mandatory, and a community service requirement is one, relatively unconstrained aspect of mandatory educational activity, this isn't a very easy case to make.</p>
