Are Long Island High Schools Discriminating Against Christian Teens?

Liz Loverde is a typical high school sophomore who loves selfies and meme-ish images of quasi-inspirational sayings. She also loves God, as evinced by her Facebook profile's cover photo, which features a phrase from Romans, "The God of peace will crush Satan under your feet," superimposed on the sole of a shoe. To express this passion for Christ IRL, Loverde wanted to form a religious club called "Dare to Believe" at her Wantagh High School in Long Island.

So she submitted a four-page proposal to her principal, which chronicled her struggles with depression and how Christianity pulled her out of them. "Life appeared to me as something not worth having or living," she wrote of the time before she was saved. "I want students to know that while they're going through these tough times, Jesus Christ offers them another view of life; a view that is truly beautiful."

According to Loverde, though, ​her request was denied in September. She says that school officials told her that she couldn't form the club because not enough students wanted to join—and that alleged decision has some Christian activists outraged.

"Your religious liberties begin at birth, not when you have 15 people at your side," says Jeremy Dys, senior counsel for the Liberty Institute, a Christian nonprofit based out of Plano, Texas. "Even Jesus and the disciples wouldn't have been able to meet by that standard."

Administrators from Wantagh High School say the allegations are false. "The district has not denied access to form a student Christian club called Dare to Believe," Maureen Goldberg, Superintendent of Wantagh Union Free School District, said in a statement to VICE. "The district is currently reviewing this request with the Board of Education and legal counsel. To date, there has been no decision based on this club."

But the Liberty Institute, which provides pro bono legal representation to Christians who believe they are being discriminated against, say that's not true—Dys claims the school hasn't complied to a demand letter and has until December 1 to do so. If it doesn't, he says, it'll have a lawsuit on its hands.

Wantagh is the second school in the area to recently run afoul of Christians. In December of 2013, Ward Melville High School told a student that he couldn't form Students United in Faith because of its religious nature, and this October, the school ​denied permission again but changed its excuse, this time saying that there wasn't enough money for the club or enough students who wanted to participate.

Federal law is pretty clear about students' rights to form clubs, including gay-straight alliances and religious groups of all sorts—it's all right there in the ​Equal Access Act of 1984. Dys says this is a pretty simple issue, and he doesn't understand why Long Island can't get it together.

"These cases are very rare, because this has been such a settled area of the law since 1984." Dys told me. "But we've had three such cases in Long Island in a year. Maybe [administrators] are getting bad advice somewhere or are worried about this so-called separation of church and state. All I know is that Christian students have the right to a club."​

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