Supreme Court Will Not Hear Religious Music Case

The U.S. Supreme Court will not hear the case of Stratechuk v. Board of Education according to a report today by the Associated Press.

Michael Stratechuk, whose children attended Columbia High School, sued the South Orange-Maplewood School District in 2004 contending that the ban on celebratory religious music was unconstitutional, violating the religious freedom provision of the First Amendment. (The district does allow for the performance of religious music as part of curriculum study and has included those performances in its winter and spring concert series.)

In November 2009, the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia upheld the ban on celebratory religious music however. In an opinion issued at the time, a three-judge panel held that the policy of the South Orange Maplewood school district "was not hostile to religion in violation of the First Amendment, nor did it violate the rights of student[s] to receive information and ideas."