In response to allegations of discrimination in Arizona schools, one lawmaker hopes a bill moving through the state Legislature will further safeguard students' freedom of religion.
Sponsored by Rep. Doug Clark, R-Phoenix, House Bill 2713, or the Students' Religious Liberties Act, passed the House of Representatives in March and was approved by the Senate Education K-12 Committee last week.
The bill will next be heard in the Senate Rules Committee, which determines the constitutionality of proposed legislation.
If it passes the Senate, the bill would prohibit all public K-12 schools from discriminating against students or their parents because of their religious viewpoints or expressions, according to a Senate fact sheet for the bill.
The legislation was drafted in response to widely reported Arizona incidents this year, Clark said. The most notable incident was at Mountain Ridge High School in Glendale, where a student was told she could not use the school's public address system to make an announcement advertising a prayer meeting.
"It was prompted by a number of events throughout the state where students were denied the right to express their religious viewpoints," Clark said.
The bill does not favor any one religion, although it was drafted in response to incidents involving the unjust treatment of evangelical Christians, he said.
"No one deserves to be discriminated against, I don't care what your color is, what your religion is," Clark said. "Really, the bill is generic."
Specific freedoms protected by the bill would include the ability to have religious references in coursework, have religious messages in clothing and accessories and participate in religious activities at school.
Although Clark has high hopes for the bill to pass, garnering enough support in the Senate will be a difficult task, and Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano is unlikely to sign it into law, he said.
"I don't have any disillusions," he said. "It's going to be a tough battle to get it out of the Senate."
As it stands, the bill only applies to K-12 grade public schools.
"I think it's mainly because we need to start somewhere," Clark said.
If a constituent were to bring to him an instance of discrimination on a college or university campus, Clark said he would be the first to get behind similar legislation for higher-education campuses.
John Carlson, a religious studies professor, said by e-mail that the bill seems to be sensibly preserve both clauses of the First Amendment regarding freedom of religious expression and the non-establishment of religion.
Still, he said, the law as it stands does not infringe on students' rights, but seeks to provide to teachers, students and parents guidance for exercising that liberty.
Leilani Merkley, a global studies junior, said she thinks the current draft of the bill is biased.
The rights of atheist or agnostic children need to be protected as well as religious children, Merkley said, and all religions need to be respected equally.
"Under the banner of the slogan 'religious freedom,' it's not religious freedom, it's Christianity freedom," Merkley said. "There's an obvious double standard."
Reach the reporter at: leigh.munsil@asu.edu.
