ADF attorneys have gone before the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to argue for a student's right to distribute Christmas party flyers at a Pennsylvania school.
Last year the superintendent of the Pocono Mountain School District banned a fifth-grader from distributing flyers inviting classmates to a Christmas party at her church.
Alliance Defending Freedom legal counsel Matt Sharp tells OneNewsNow a district court has already ruled in favor of the young student, "ruling that this was her personal expression, this invitation, and that she had the right to share it and to distribute it at school to her classmates."
"The school district then appealed it to the Third Circuit, and last week, we had an oral argument before the Third Circuit panel," the attorney explains.
He asserts that many of the restrictive policies present on school campuses throughout the country are outdated and unconstitutional and need to be revoked or revised.
"The more and more we have these cases and these court rulings … we can really continue the momentum we have," Sharp offers. "And school districts will start to get the message and hopefully will take their own steps to revoke these policies rather than it having to be done through legal action or something like that."
Though the Pocono Mountain School District's policies were revised last year, the court found those alterations insufficient to stop further violations of students' constitutional rights.
In a similar situation, an elementary school in Florida kept a fourth-grader from distributing invitations to an Easter egg hunt earlier this year. ADF took on that case as well.