A religious freedom organization representing the family of a 7-year-old stopped from giving out candy canes with a religious message last year has filed an injunction ahead of the holiday season to block West Covina Unified Schools from banning the messages again this year.
Schoolboy Isaiah Martinez garnered attention last year when a district teacher removed a Christian message on a class gift that cited the origin of candy canes as being a symbol of the life of Jesus. The messages were thrown away before Martinez could pass out the candy canes, according to the Advocates for Faith and Freedom.
The family filed a lawsuit in September.
“The school has neglected to correct its actions and after exhausting all options to avoid a lawsuit, we were left with no choice but to file a complaint in federal court,” Attorney Robert Tyler said in a written statement. “We are asking the court to protect Isaiah’s rights and the rights of others like him from having their religious speech censored. Students do not shed their First Amendment rights just because they enter into a classroom.”
Last year, District Superintendent Debra Kaplan said she believed the teacher only intended to maintain “religious neutrality in the classroom.”
Another attorney for the Advocates, James Long, said the injunction came because the school district gave “every indication that it will again prohibit Isaiah from passing out the candy cane legend at his school’s holiday party in the name ‘religious neutrality.’”
The legend on the candy cane, debunked by various sources including Smithsonian.com, says that a candymaker in Indiana made the candy cane white “to symbolize the Virgin Birth and the sinless nature of Jesus,” hard “to symbolize the Solid Rock, the foundation of the Church, and firmness of the promises of God,” in the shape of a J for Jesus, and with a red stripe “for the blood shed by Christ on the cross so that we could have the promise of eternal life.”
References to the candy cane date back more than a hundred years before Indiana became a state.
