Student Speaks Out on Controversial Graduation Speech, Says He Just Wanted to Share Good News of the Gospel
Brooks Hamby, the student who gave thanks to Jesus and asked for the blessing of "the God of the Bible" for his peers during his high school salutatorian speech last month, said he's surprised the school district believes their attempts to stifle his freedom of speech is constitutional.
The Brawley Union High School District in California read over Hamby's salutatorian speech for approval and rejected it three times because Hamby mentioned his religion, Jesus and God.
"I was really surprised the school would deny my speech not once, twice, but three times," said Hamby in an interview with Todd Starnes of Fox News last week. "I just wanted to say a few nice words and allow people to see the good news, which is the Gospel."
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In response to a legal query about their refusal to allow sectarian remarks in graduation speeches and their review of speeches in advance, the school district maintained that their policy prohibiting religious references in graduation speeches is constitutional.
The query to the school district was sent by the Plano, Texas-based Liberty Institute, which is working on behalf of Hamby.
"We regularly consult with students who have their First Amendment rights censored by a school," Jeremiah G. Dys, senior counsel with the Liberty Institute, told The Christian Post. "We got in contact with Brooks soon after he gave his speech — the only version which was not censored by the school — and continue to evaluate his options in response to the school¹s unlawful conduct."
During an interview last month on Fox News' "Fox & Friends," hamby described how the schol district had made several attempts to censor his speech.
"The first and second times I submitted my speech the school told me, as well as their attorneys, that any reference to God or Jesus or prayer of any kind was unconstitutional and they would pull my mic. Additionally, the third time I handed my speech in they denied it, and handed it back to me with God or any reference to my faith blackedout in black marker," Hamby explained.
The fhird draft was denied on the afternnon of the graduation.
"Time was ticking down and I was at a crossroads and wasn't really sure what to do. But I decided to stick to the message, and that was to stick up for my freedom of expression and stand up for my faith," he added.
In their response to the Liberty Institute, lawyers representing the school district stated that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals allowed for them to restrict the content of Hamby's graduation speech.
"There is no legal authority that a student speaker — who serves as a school district's authorized representative of student success in its ceremony — has a legal right to lead his classmates in prayer in his salutatory speech," wrote the lawyers.
"In fact, the Ninth Circuit and California Supreme Court have both expressly (and repeatedly) required public school districts to maintain religious neutrality at graduation ceremonies."
The attorneys also wrote to the Liberty Institute that the original drafts of Hamby's speech were sectarian in nature, meant for proselytizing and wrong for a captive audience to be exposed to.
"You claim there was no proselytizing … in Mr. Hamby's draft speech. However, even a cursory reading of Mr. Hamby's proposed speeches reveals they were little more than prayers/sectarian invocations," wrote the lawyers.
Regarding the 10-page letter sent by the school's attorneys, Dys of the Liberty Institute called their response "remarkable" and "an open invitation to litigation."
"This detailed legal memo (which probably cost well over $10,000 for the school to produce) is essentially an open invitation to litigation — one our client may just accept," said Dys.
"Effectively, they have taken all the credit for our client's success and, thereby, claimed his speech is the school's speech. Our client earned the right to address his peers. The school should listen to his speech, not censor it or try to take all the credit for it."
Brawley Union High School District did not return comment to The Christian Post by press time.
