PASADENA, Calif. — In a stunning blow to the First Amendment, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Poway High School administrators in California were justified in removing Christian student Chase Harper from school because his actions violated the rights of gay and lesbian students at the school “in the most fundamental way.”

Harper was removed from class for wearing a tee-shirt that said,  "I will not accept what God has condemned” and “Homosexuality is shameful - Romans 1:27” on the back.

Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), who defended Harper, say they plan to appeal today’s ruling by two judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit who upheld the high school’s decision to prohibit a student from expressing his views regarding homosexual behavior.

“Students do not give up their First Amendment rights at the schoolhouse door,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Kevin Theriot.  “This panel has upheld school censorship of student expression if it is the Christian view of homosexual behavior.  They have essentially determined that student quotation of Scripture can be prohibited.  This case will proceed at the district court level, but we intend to appeal today’s extremely poor ruling to the full 9th Circuit.”

A school administrator told Harper to “leave his faith in the car” when his faith might offend others.

The decision by the two-judge majority of a three-judge 9th Circuit panel upholds a lower court’s denial of a motion by ADF attorneys that asked for Poway High School’s policy regarding the tee-shirt to be immediately halted while the case moves forward.

The third judge, Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski, dissented strongly. In his 26-page dissenting opinion he said,  “I have considerable difficulty with giving school authorities the power to decide that only one side of a controversial topic may be discussed in the school environment because the opposing point of view is too extreme or demeaning."

Kozinski wrote, "The types of speech that could be banned by the school authorities under the Poway High School hate policy are practically without limit. Any speech code that has at its heart avoiding offense to others gives anyone with a thin skin a heckler's veto - something the Supreme Court has not approved in the past."

Judge Kozinski added, "The fundamental problem with the majority’s approach is that it has no anchor anywhere in the record or in the law.  It is entirely a judicial creation, hatched to deal with the situation before us, but likely to cause innumerable problems in the future.” 

“The court has manufactured new law in the area of student speech in saying students cannot say anything that school officials deem ‘demeaning’ to another,” Theriot said. 

“This is the same court that ruled that parental rights stop at the schoolhouse gate and that ‘God’ should be removed from the Pledge of Allegiance.  This case is not over.” 

Jack Sleeth, one of the Poway School District lawyers does not believe the case is over either. He said, “It's the perfect kind of case to go to the Supreme Court.”