The Ohio House passed a unique religious liberty bill for students earlier this month. It’s causing considerable controversy due to both the wording of the bill and the Left’s interpretation of it.
Despite the bill’s good intentions, to protect student’s religious liberties, it seems an unnecessary overreach on an issue that’s already constitutionally protected, and that’s better handled between parents, teachers, and students.
On Nov. 13, the Ohio House passed the Student Religious Liberties Act and sent it to the state Senate. The bill says schools should let students express their religion in their homework assignments, and it keeps public schools from penalizing or rewarding a student if and when he does this. It sounds rather straightforward, if not somewhat excessive. Rep. Timothy Ginter, the bill’s sponsor, said he drafted the legislation to help religious students handle the pressures they face in today’s age.
An article in the Guardian complained that the language was taken from similar bills drafted by Project Blitz, which the Guardian dubs an “anti-gay Christian group.”
Steven Fitschen, president of the National Legal Foundation, told the Guardian, “We are, of course, delighted that legislators in Ohio drafted a bill so similar to our model bill since we believe its provisions are constitutional and beneficial to students of faith in Ohio, without impinging on anyone else’s rights.”
It’s not uncommon for similar organizations to work together on like-minded goals. I’m not sure how that makes this bill “anti-gay” or even super pro-Christian.
Opponents say the bill would let students choose faith over science, and when the subjects intertwine, would not penalize a student for giving an academically wrong answer so long as he cited his faith as the reason for the answer (think test questions in biology class). Supporters deny this claim.
In their analysis of the bill, the Washington Post quoted bill sponsor Ginter as saying, “Under House Bill 164, a Christian or Jewish student would not be able to say my religious texts teach me that the world is 6,000 years old, so I don’t have to answer this question. They’re still going to be tested in the class, and they cannot ignore the class material.”
The text of the bill doesn’t seem to explicitly allow for students to give knowingly wrong answers under the guise of their faith, but I’m not surprised the Left would twist the bill to say something it doesn’t, especially when the matter at hand is the intersection of education and religion. That doesn’t mean the bill is actually necessary, or even really helpful in protecting students’ religious liberty.
On the one hand, this issue should remain a local one, handled at the state level, rather than federal. However, even at the state level, there is such a thing as over-legislating issues already protected by the First Amendment. Conservatives are as guilty of it as liberals: Not every single potential problem needs to have a legislative fix.
And it’s hard to believe this issue is actually a regular problem in Ohio public schools. The state trends rather socially conservative, with nearly 75% of Ohio residents identifying as Christian. Yet it’s even harder to believe this issue can’t be better handled between parents and the individual schools or school districts should it come up, rather than through state-wide legislation.
Conservatives must not take advantage of their religious rights, granted in the First Amendment, and require the government, hardly an ally, to protect them from hurt feelings, academic conflicts between science and faith, or biased teachers. Not every religious issue is one for the state to shield a religious person from — some are best dealt with between children, teachers, and parents. This looks like one of them.
Nicole Russell (@russell_nm) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner‘s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota.
