The Loveland school administrators who banned a high school student from wearing rosaries in school think they’re justified because they’re acting to suppress gang-related activity.
We’re not so sure they’re on firm legal ground.
While the courts have generally sided with schools that enact dress codes to tamp down gang activity, they haven’t been as inclined to do so when it comes to rosaries.
That’s because restricting the wearing of rosaries runs smack into the constitutionally protected right to free exercise of religion.
A pertinent question in the Loveland situation is whether the rosaries in question are truly religious items.
The issue came to light when authorities at Thompson Valley High School confiscated two sets of rosary beads over three weeks from student Manuel Vigil. The principal said the rosary wasn’t normal because of the bead pattern.
“It wasn’t consistent with what would normally be a rosary, and because of that we felt like it could be gang-related,” principal Mark Johnson said, according to a Loveland Reporter-Herald story. “There was no punishment; we just removed it.”
The rosary had 13 beads in a sequence, whereas a typical rosary has 10. The Reporter-Herald story also quoted Loveland Police Sgt. David Murphy, who leads the school resource officers in the Thompson School District, as saying 13 beads in a row are a red flag. The number 13 is associated with the Sureños gang, Murphy said.
While it’s true that rosaries used at times by Catholics in saying prayers typically have 10 beads in a row, some unusual rosaries have 13 beads. Those are for different prayers and sequences of prayers. Vigil is Catholic.
The courts have generally taken a dim view of school efforts to ban students from wearing rosary beads.
The key federal court case on the issue is one from 1997 out of Texas, Chalifoux vs. New Caney Independent School District. The court decided the school in question had violated the students’ First Amendment right to free exercise of religion.
The court noted school dress codes can be used to restrict gang activity on campuses but concluded the rosary ban unduly burdened the students who brought the legal action because they were not affiliated with a gang.
That case turned on whether the students were engaging in a “sincere expression of their religious beliefs.” The court found they were.
And that may very well be the legal linchpin in the situation in Loveland.
Was Vigil affiliated with a gang, or was he wearing the rosary to help him deal with the recent murder of his uncle, as his mother said?
Were his rosaries legitimate religious items — perhaps unusual ones — or were they knock-offs intended to communicate a gang-related message?
The details in these sort of situations truly make the difference.
School officials have weighty issues to consider before banning what is ostensibly religious expression. It’s not altogether apparent whether school officials in Loveland have cleared those hurdles.
