School district agrees with ACLU Consent Decree modifications

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida has reached agreement with the Santa Rosa County School District on strengthening and clarifying a court-approved 2009 Consent Decree agreement that ended school-sponsored religious activities by the district and its employees.

In making the voluntary clarifications, the ACLU and Tim Wyrosdick, schools superintendent, agreed to reinforce and clarify the basic premise of the original Consent Decree – that official, government sanctioned religious activities are prohibited under the Constitution while individual religious expressions are protected by the Constitution. 

 “Our original agreement with the school district was clear and consistent with religious liberty provisions of the Constitution,” said Benjamin James Stevenson, attorney in the ACLU of Florida’s Northwest Regional Office in Pensacola. “To the extent there was any confusion about what the Constitution requires, we want to be clear and have been even more clear now.”

For more on this  story, see the July 7 issue of the Navarre Press.