Las Vegas at Center of Constitutional Fight
Here is my interview with John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute. The Rutherford Institute filed a federal lawsuit yesterday on behalf of local Foothill High School valedictorian Brittany McComb, whose microphone was cut off when she included religious remarks the school had ordered her to delete from her graduation speech.
Q: How were your client Brittany McComb's rights violated?
A:They had three valedictorians. They picked them by grade point and they said to them to speak on what is important to you. She did. She is a Christian. I've read the speech. Somewhere in the middle of it she says 'the Lord' and she mentions Christ. That is what is important to her, the God connection. The school sat down and crossed all that out and said this is the official version that she has to give. She was intimidated and nodded her head. But the day of the speech she decided to give the speech she wanted to and when she got 12 words outside the boundary of the regular speech they cut the microphone. We have the visual on our website, and there is just silence and you can see her keep talking. The crowd boos and says "Let her speak." It is kind of moving. But cutting the microphone is the most egregious thing. This wasn't the school endorsing religion. She was one of three people up there. Let her have her free speech. You either believe in free speech or you don't. Let her speak.
Q: Is it odd for you then to be at odds with the ACLU on this since the ACLU endorsed the school's decision?
A:I think it is really strange, the ACLU's position on this. They side with the government to censor somebody. To me at that point they are not a civil liberties group. If it was a teacher I would be against it. If it was a superintendent I would be against it. If it was a minister there praying I would be against it. But this wasn't a prayer; this was speech and for the ACLU to be on the side of the State in saying someone should be censored is odd.
Q: So, you don't see how her talking about her faith could be seen as an endorsement by the school of religion?
A: I don't see how. An easier way to handle this was to do a disclaimer and say none of the speeches are attributed to the school. They had many different speakers there. She was only one speaker there mentioning Christ and they cut her. If they are going to say to the young person say what is important they should be able to say it. The Supreme Court says they can't curse and I agree with that. The school should be able to limit that. But are we saying now that if she mentions Christ it is in the same category as obscenity? It just boils down to being a pure free speech issue.
Q: So, what is Rutherford looking to get? What are you looking for to resolve this?
A: Just for the court to rule this is a violation of the First Amendment, essentially. We also think by going through her speech and crossing out Christ and Lord it is the government interfering and entangling itself in religion. The Supreme Court has been pretty clear that state officials should not be doing that. They didn't cut any other microphone off. So, they did not treat her equally and we think that is a violation of the 14th Amendment. I think we could win this case up the chain. I don't know how we will do along the way. This is ready for the Supreme Court to rule on this down the line. The Court has not really ruled on this. They ruled on a prayer by a Rabbi but not on what a kid can say.
Q: The ACLU says this is all settled case law. Do you think it is murkier?
A: Well, it is murky at the Supreme Court level. Some appellate courts have let schools limit what kids can say at graduation. But this is a different fact situation with the cutting of the microphone. The courts have said there is state speech and there is private speech and private speech is protected even in a state facility. I think she was giving speech protected by the First Amendment
Q: So are you trying to get money from the school?
A: No. These are decent Americans who are just outraged at what happened to their daughter. If you go to the website and look at what happened it was really humiliating. She had a lot of guts. She is very brave when you see the video. Talking into silence as her First Amendment right. It is a sham to say the kids are giving the speeches when the schools are doing this(censoring them).
So that is the Rutherford's Institute's take on the incident. I will try to reach the ACLU for a response. In the meantime, What do you think? Did the school do the right think in cutting the microphone out when Brittany McComb's speech turned explicitly religious? Was separation of church and state protected or freedom of speech lost?
I guess it depends on how the school justifies their actions. If they cut her off because she departed from the edited script, their actions are probably justified *if* they would've acted the same way if other speakers departed from their scripts.
As for editing out the "Christs" and the "Lords" in the first place: I am more stumped about the legality of this action. But I could see how the school would have an interest in preventing a graduation speech from turning into a sermon. Afterall, the school doesn't have to let the valedictorian get up at all -- speaking in front of your class at graduation in of itself is not a right.
Posted by: crazymonk | July 14, 2006 at 03:32 PM
I guess it is politically incorrect to say so, but the area of Nevada where Foothill High School is located is heavily, almost predominately, Jewish. With many Jewish families gathered together to enjoy their children's graduation ceremonies, perhaps the "Christ" references were not "tolerated". In my experience as a moderate Christian who grew up among Jewish people my whole life in Los Angeles, I would find that kind of behavior to be uncommon for Jewish people; however, in my experience as one of the nearly 2 million people who have moved from Los Angeles to Las Vegas (in the heavily Jewish area where Foothill High School is located), I would find that kind of aggression to be par for the course. While they are by no means racist, the Jews in Las Vegas are subject to the same law of human behavior we have all seen when any one group of people congregates in the majority! Standing up in front of a room full of Jewish people and talking about Christ, yeah, I can definitely believe someone would have cut the mic --I don't think they would have done anything worse than that though.
It would be interesting to see if this kind of incident of cutting the microphone when the kid started mentioning Christ would have happened over in the Christ-worshiping, predominately Mormon area of Nevada only 8 miles (as the crow flies) to the North East. Although settled by Mormons, Mormons left Nevada for more fertile pastures in Utah at the end of the 19th century; however, Utah Mormons were later re-imported to the North East area of the Las Vegas valley by notorious Jewish and Italian mobsters from New York and Chicago seeking to put an honest face on their dirty casinos during the 1950s-1970s. Today, Las Vegas valley has a huge Mormon population that revolves around the North East side.
But Foothill High School is located in one of the newer sections of Las Vegas which are master planned communities undertaken after the incredible success of "Green Valley", the most famous master planned community created by the Jewish family of Hank Green-spun, the famous "local" who broke federal law to assist the creation of the pre-Israel state in the Middle East and who helped Howard Hughes with the buyout of much of the Las Vegas Strip from the local mobsters without ever having met Hughes in person and who co-created Greenspun Media Group which owns the local TV stations, newspapers, locals casinos and influences the Las Vegas shadow government known as the LVCVA.
For years during and after the mob was crushed, the Mormons and Jews co-existed in peaceful rivalry. The mob may be gone and Wall Street may have theoretical control of the big gaming industry in Las Vegas, but throughout all businesses and institutions in Las Vegas, there is a sense best described as "wanna be mobsterism". How could such a theme spread throughout all institutions like that? Maybe it has to do with the high concentration of two religions that have outlasted the mob itself in Las Vegas. Ex-mob lawyer turned mayor of Las Vegas, Oscar Goodman was quoted in a local newspaper as saying something like 'The Mormon's give 10% of everything they get to God, the Jews just throw everything up in the air and let God keep what he wants'. Incredibly inappropriate by Los Angeles standards, but typical for Las Vegas. The local people in Las Vegas, whether they own a dry cleaner, a nightclub, manage a district for the city council, administrate a high school, sell real estate or run an HOA property management company, they all have this "I'm a non-violent wise-guy" kind of wanna-be-mobster attitude. No surprise one of them pulled the plug on the girl's speech, that's the "style" of how things are carried out in Las Vegas (and Soviet Russia).
But the real unwritten truth here that you have touched on in your article is that those 1.4 million people who have moved to Las Vegas over the span of less time than most auto loans are not coming from the heavy Jewish populations in New York, New Jersey and Florida, nor the heavily Mormon populations in Utah and Arizona and they are not adopting the aggressive attitudes handed down for the past 55 years within those communities. They are coming largely from Los Angeles and their demographics reflect the kind of cultural diversity you see in Los Angeles. These populations are being totally blind-sighted when they move into Las Vegas and they cringe when they hear people like the Mayor say such things or a child graduating with top honors knocked off the PA system for mentioning Christ.
The numbers are with the Los Angelinos, so these Las Vegas locals better shape-up, watch their step and learn to value diversity or they're going to be fined and imprisoned. It's not about whether or not the girl wins her lawsuit for being cutoff on the PA system. It is about purging the bastards out of Foothill High School who think like mobsters. The spectacle of Las Vegas city commissioners being paraded into court on mob-connected bribery charges, judges being paid-off by lawyers in the form of campaign contributions, double-dipping state legislators, Jewish controlled HOAs seizing properties over minor infractions, excessive police shootings of unarmed (and sometimes handcuffed) citizens and the local news people who seem completely oblivious to the fact that they are broadcasting to 1.4 million "new comers" is going to boil over into quite an embarrassing federal issue never before seen in the West and well beyond the ability of even the Jewish and Mormon controlled Las Vegas Shadow Government (aka LVCVA) to control. It's not just the size of the transplant population from Los Angeles, it is the economic pressure that comes from a weakening consumer (due to soaring energy and depleting housing values), increased competition from Tribal Gaming and the increased federal oversight in all aspects of Las Vegas life. Las Vegas is a really really upscale area of Los Angeles now, and it better get used to it.
Posted by: Anonymous | July 17, 2006 at 06:20 AM