In 'Jesus Glasses' Case, Court Rules in Teacher's Favor

Because the courts have never established how far a teacher can go in criticizing religion, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday that a Capistrano Valley High School history teacher could not have known whether he was overstepping his bounds when he made a number of comments that a Christian student took as disparaging.

The court declined to speak to the constitutionality of teacher James Corbett’s comments made during advanced-placement European history lessons at the Mission Viejo high school.

Among them were “The people who want to make the argument that God did it, there is as much evidence that God did it as there is that there is a gigantic spaghetti monster living behind the moon who did it" and “When you put on your Jesus glasses, you can't see the truth." 

The three-judge panel, which heard , said a teacher’s comments may sometimes rise to the level of unconstitutional hostility.

“But without any cases illuminating the ‘dimly perceive[d] ... line of demarcation’ between permissible and impermissible discussion of religion in a college-level history class, we cannot conclude that a reasonable teacher standing in Corbett’s shoes would have been on notice that his actions might be unconstitutional,” the court said in its 24-page opinion.

Corbett said today he was “certainly pleased” with the ruling. “In my view, it should’ve been thrown out in the first place,” he said.

Earlier, in May 1, 2009,  District Judge James V. Selna in Santa Ana ruled that one of the statements then-student Chad Farnan recorded during Corbett’s classes violated the student’s First Amendment rights.

Farnan’s lawyers argued that Corbett violated the students’ First Amendment rights—not the right to speak freely but the right of the people to be free from a government-established religion. Selna wrote that hostility to religion is equal to proselytizing a religion.