Tuesday, April 22nd, Federal Judge Barbier ruled Tangipahoa Parish public schools must stop school Bible giveaways to students.

U.S. District Judge Carl J. Barbier stated, “Distribution of Bibles is a religious activity without a secular purpose that amounts to school board promotion of Christianity. This is in violation of the First Amendment’s separation of church and state. “

Based only on the written briefs, something a judge may do only if the law is absolutely clear, Barbier made a summary judgment.

Christopher M. Moody, attorney said, “He thinks the Tangipahoa Parish School Board is likely to ask the 5th U.S. Court of Appeal to overturn Barbier’s decision, though he hadn’t yet consulted with the board.”

A suit was filed by The American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana for an anonymous family whose daughter shared that she felt pressured into taking a Bible although she doesn’t believe in God. According to the ACLU, the father who was called John Roe and his daughter called Jane Roe did this out of fear of retaliation by their neighbors and classmates.

"Jane Roe states that she accepted the Bible because if she did not, her classmates would have 'picked on' her," Barbier wrote. "She feared they would call her ‘devil worshipper’.”

The ACLU chapter executive director, Marjorie R. Esman said, “A child shouldn’t have to choose between her family’s beliefs and the wishes of school administrators.”

The Gideons International visited Loranger Middle School on May 9, 2007 where Jane Roe was a fifth-grader. Her Principal Andre Pellerin informed the fifth-grade teachers that the Gideons would be on the school campus that day giving out free Bibles right outside his office. Mr. Pellerin’s e-mail said, “Please stress to students that they DO NOT have to get a bible.”

Judge Barbier, however, wrote that procedures upheld as neutral for secondary school students might be out of bounds for “an impressionable young elementary age child.” The Judge made a ruling, which upheld a W. Virginia county’s school system of having both religious and non -religious materials on a school table where each student could have access to when they walk by.

The 4th Circuit Court of Appeal made the statement that grade-school children might not understand that the school was not endorsing any of the materials.

After the table being set up outside the principal’s office at Loranger School, the impression received was that the school was endorsing Christianity according to Barbier. For more clarity the school board is working on a policy along the lines of the one cited by Barbier but had not been completed according to Moody.

On the other hand, the board believes the current policy is legal.

“We did not allow The Gideons or anyone else to distribute Bibles in the classroom. We didn’t require any student to take a Bible, they were just available right at the front door. The Gideons distribute to most systems in the state. The ACLU only wants to pick on us.”

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