A dispute over a student's parking spot shows how schools keep failing Religious Freedom 101
A New York school told a Christian girl she couldn't paint Bible verses in her parking spot because then they'd have to "approve a Satanic symbol"
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Grand Island Senior High School in western New York (near Buffalo) has a neat program for rising seniors with parking spots: For $50, they’re allowed to paint it to reflect their personalities. It’s a win-win for everyone: The school gets to “beautify the campus” and “build school spirit,” while the students get a chance to showcase a part of themselves in an atypical way.
The school only had a few ground rules: No profanity, nothing offensive, no gang symbols, etc. Students also had to submit, in advance, a sketch of what they wanted to paint so that the administration could approve it.
Last May, one of those upcoming seniors, Sabrina Steffans, submitted her sketch: It included a Christian cross, the phrases “God is love” and “He loves you” and the text of a Bible verse (John 14:6). It made sense given that she’s the president of a Christian club at the school.
But administrators told her that was unacceptable. According to Steffans, they told her, “If we had to approve your cross, we’d have to approve a Satanic symbol,” adding that students “wouldn’t want to attend a school like that.”
They told her if she “disguised” the cross as a lower-case T, the design would be accepted. Steffans didn’t want to make that change at the time, though, so she submitted a different design a couple of weeks later.
This one included their compromise. It said “let your light shine,” with the “T” in “light” being a Christian cross, as the administrators suggested. It also included the phrase “His will his way my Life” and referenced Jeremiah 29:11. So… basically everything the school said she could do.
But this design was also rejected. This time, the school said the problems were the biblical references. An administrator said she could use the phrase “He is King” but she couldn’t say “God.”
At this point, the censorship was getting out of hand and the suggested compromises didn’t even make any sense. But Steffans submitted a third design that obeyed all the rules thrown in her direction. This one kept the “Let your light shine” (with the cross in the word “light”) and included “He is King.”
The school finally gave an okay to that design.
But at this point, lawyers from the right-wing First Liberty Institute had gotten involved. They sent a letter to the district laying out everything that had transpired before pointing out that other students were allowed to personalize their parking spots without interference. It was unconstitutional, they said, to allow a limited public forum while trying to censor a religious message. You can’t tell students they can decorate their parking spots however they want (with sensible guidelines) while rejecting religious references.
They’re right about that. It’s what the Supreme Court has basically been saying for years now. Whether it’s invocations at city council meetings, or flags on a city flagpole, or a public school parking space, if you allow the public to participate, you can’t refuse a request just because it’s religious.
That also means that if a student wanted to paint a “Satanic symbol” or write that “God doesn’t exist but I love you!” the school couldn’t refuse those either.
Last week, First Liberty announced that the school district took their warning seriously and told Steffans she could paint her parking spot based on her original submission.
Brian Graham, the district’s superintendent, said in a statement, “While we strongly dispute any assertion that our policies or decisions violated the rights of any student, the Board of Education and District leadership, after careful consultation with legal counsel, have decided that the student in question will be permitted to proceed with her original senior parking space design.”
That’s a weird way to just say, “Yeah, we screwed up. Our lawyers are very mad at us right now, so let’s just pretend we never rejected anything the student submitted.” Graham also said the school would review the program to see if any changes needed to be made in the future.
I would suggest two: Make clear to everyone that religious and political designs (that aren’t purposely offensive) are okay… and then just do away with the program entirely because there will undoubtedly be kids who take advantage of this freedom.
I’ll openly admit the Christian student’s in the right here. I think her initial design should have been approved last year, and the school should have anticipated something like this would happen when they launched the parking spot decoration program. It’s absurd that they just assumed nothing “controversial” would ever be painted in those spots.
It’s not like this is a new issue. In 2018, a high school in Texas that ran a similar program got in trouble after administrators told one Muslim girl who wanted to draw the Taj Mahal that she should make sure it doesn’t look like a mosque. They also rejected a design from a Black girl whose self-portrait submission showed her wearing a shirt saying “Black Girl Magic.” Meanwhile, the same school approved a design with a “Blue Lives Matter” flag and other ones with Bible verses.
There’s another issue here worth exploring here too. Right-wing media outlets have been pushing this story the past few days for obvious reasons: A public school discriminated against a Christian student, and the Christian won!
Yet whenever atheists or Satanists take advantage of the same open forums—to deliver an invocation or put up a display in the State Capitol—the same legal groups and media outlets often frame it as anti-Christian or offensive. Or they pretend non-Christian groups just don’t qualify under the same rules.
So here’s the question First Liberty and conservative media outlets need to answer: If another student draws a Satanic symbol or atheist message in their parking spot in the future, will they support that student’s right to do so? Without a clear-cut answer on that, they have no business taking a victory lap on the back of the Constitution.
I have zero doubt that this school would determine a Satanic symbol to be offensive and against the rules.
“If we had to approve your cross, we’d have to approve a Satanic symbol,” adding that students “wouldn’t want to attend a school like that.”
This statement says it all. It’s not about freedom at all. It’s about control.