The Indian River School District Board of Education voted unanimously on Monday to deny a settlement offered by the plaintiffs in the case of Dobrich v. the Indian River School District.
The plaintiffs — the Dobrich family and another family officials close to the litigation won’t name — offered the settlement late last year after filing the complaint last February.
In that complaint, the Dobriches, a Jewish family, claimed that the district violated their First Amendment rights by acting intolerantly to their religion.
“We didn’t agree with the settlement,” said school board President Charles Bireley, adding that there is a gag order for those close to the case. “In all honesty, that’s all we can say.”
The Coastal Point could not reach two of the attorneys working with the school board — Thomas Neuberger, who is defending board member Reggie Helms, and John Cafferky — before this edition went to press.
Thomas Allingham, a partner in the Wilmington office of the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom, who is one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs, attended Monday’s special board meeting and commented on the board’s decision.
“We’re disappointed that what we viewed as a fair and reasonable balancing of the interests of all parties to this litigation was rejected by the school board but we’re fully prepared to litigate our claim,” he said.
Now, the attorneys on both sides will exchange documents pertinent to the case and start interviewing possible witnesses in the case that may take a year to see the inside of a court room.
When it does — and if it ultimately does — go to court, U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Farnan will hear the case. Farnan has already issued an opinion on the matter when he released the board members as individual defendants in the case in August of 2005, ruling on the issue of opening a board meeting with a prayer.
In his opinion, Farnan cited Marsh v. Chambers, a Supreme Court decision issued in 1983. Supreme Court Justice Warren Burger used a historical precedent to voice his opinion, saying that “the opening of sessions of legislative and other deliberative public bodies with prayer is deeply embedded in the history and tradition of this country.”
But prayer before school board meetings was just a part of the plaintiff’s complaint. In the complaint, the Dobriches and the other family noted that school-sponsored prayer at athletic and academic events and banquets had “pervaded the life” of district teachers and students.
Specific examples cited in the complaint claimed that some teachers had preached “one true religion” and offered preferential treatment to students in a school-sponsored Bible Club. Some district teachers even passed out bibles during school hours, according to the complaint.
Also, “The district schools’ sixth grade science classes include a lesson on evolution. In at least one school, however, school officials have given students the option to attend Bible Club and do a worksheet instead,” the complaint reads.
Despite their obvious distaste towards the above-mentioned issues, the Dobrich’s and the other family didn’t file their complaint until after Samantha Dobrich’s graduation ceremony at Indian River High School in June of 2004.
Pastor Jerry Fike offered two Christian prayers, mentioning Jesus Christ during the invocation and the benediction at the graduation, speeches the Dobriches considered inappropriate.
“We pray that you direct them into the truth and eventually the truth that comes by knowing Jesus,” Fike said as a part of his speech that was replicated in the complaint.
According to that complaint, Samantha Dobrich turned to her mother, Mona, in the stands while listening and was evidently offended by the Pastor’s words. After the graduation, her mother complained to Lois Hobbs, the district’s superintendent, saying that the Pastor’s speech had ruined her daughter’s graduation.
Hobbs and the school board first publicly addressed the issue in June of 2004 and, according the complaint, the Dobriches were ostracized by their peers in the community. In October 2004, the school board adopted a policy, regarding school-sponsored prayer.
“School officials may not mandate or organize prayer at graduation or select speakers in a manner that favors religious speech. Graduation speakers shall be selected on the basis of genuinely neutral criteria,” the policy reads.
“Neither the district, or school administrator, teacher or other school employee shall implement any selection process… to determine whether or not a political, philosophical, religious or other message shall be presented during commencement or graduation ceremonies.”
But by the time the district adopted the policy, the plaintiffs had been threatened, ridiculed, and according to the complaint, they felt pressured to leave the area, which they did, moving their younger son out of the public school system.
Now the policy will likely be decided in a United States District Court House.