The sole elementary school in a rural Florida county has disbanded its Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) club because an atheist group complained that it was “unconstitutional” to “indoctrinate” kids into religion.
Hamilton County Elementary School, located in the small town of Jasper, was stiff-armed into shutting down its chapter of the North Central Florida FCA after the Wisconsin-based Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) accused the school of violating the First Amendment in March.
“Students have the First Amendment right to be free from religious indoctrination in their public schools,” wrote FFRF legal fellow Samantha F. Lawrence in a letter addressed to Hamilton County School District Superintendent Dorothy Lee Wetherington-Zamora.
The atheist group argued that the Equal Access Act protects students’ right to form religious clubs in secondary schools, not elementary schools.
“Elementary students are too young to truly run a club entirely on their own initiative with no input from school staff or outside adults,” Lawrence said.
“Any claims that the Hamilton Elementary FCA club is ‘student led’ are at best naive and at worst dishonest,” she continued. “Young children cannot practically initiate, organize, and run an FCA club on their own, meaning adults are the ones truly behind the club.”
The FFRF routinely harasses Christian educators to stop professing their faith, leading to a Georgia high school football coach getting fired for bringing a pastor to the school to baptize willing players in November 2023, Breitbart News reported.
More recently, the activist group took aim at University of South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley for pushing her Christian faith to the forefront while coaching and saying something must be “wrong” in those who do not believe in God.
“The District must immediately investigate this matter and ensure that the FCA club at Hamilton Elementary is disbanded,” the FFRF letter demanded. “The District cannot allow Hamilton Elementary to violate students’ First Amendment rights by organizing, leading, and promoting a religious club for elementary school children.”
The school district’s legal team, which attorney Meagan L. Logan heads, conceded to the FFRF in an April 22 response:
The District has investigated the allegations of your letter and concluded that there was a small group of fifth grade students participating in such a club at the school. While these same students will be eligible to participate in FCA on the campus of Hamilton County High School in a few short months as six graders, in an effort to avoid any perception that such a gathering on the campus of Hamilton Elementary is being organized, promoted or endorsed by the District or its employees, the club has been dispersed. We trust the above referenced investigation and response alleviates the concerns expressed in your letter.
The FFRF celebrated the disbandment of the “unconstitutional elementary school religious club,” saying it was “always pleased to see the freedom of conscience of students being respected.”
“The Hamilton County School District ought to know better than allowing a religious group free access to students during the day,” FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor said in a press release. “School districts exist to educate, not indoctrinate into religion.”
The First Liberty Institute, which boasts of being “the largest legal organization in the nation dedicated exclusively to defending religious liberty,” was critical of Hamilton County School District for caving into the FFRF.
“Banning students from having a religious club at a school while permitting other, secular clubs is a travesty that teaches children their faith is unwelcome and must be hidden,” the organization’s senior counsel, Justin Butterfield, said in a statement to the Christian Post.
“The Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized that students’ religious viewpoints are protected by the First Amendment and that students do not give up their free speech rights while at school — including elementary schools,” the lawyer explained.
“When groups like FFRF pressure schools to ban religious student clubs like FCA while permitting secular clubs, those groups are pressuring schools to break the law,” Butterfield added.
The FFRF has since continued to go after schools and other institutions for including faith, with a Tuesday attack on another Florida school district “for endorsing Christian nationalism through its recent support of the National Day of Prayer.”