School Violates Religious Rights

By JIM FITZGERALD Associated Press Writer

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) -- A lawyer for a school district found to have violated the religious rights of Catholic families says the ruling will have a chilling effect on classroom curricula.

U.S. District Judge Charles Brieant held Friday that the Bedford Central School District violated the religious rights of three families by holding an Earth Day liturgy, by encouraging the use of ``worry dolls'' and by having third-graders make paper images of a Hindu god.

The families alleged in a lawsuit that the district promoted Satanism, the occult and New Age religion. Brieant ruled against the families on a dozen or so other issues, including complaints about yoga lessons. He called the case ``agenda driven litigation.''

But the district's lawyer, Warren Richmond, said the ruling would have a negative effect on teachers as they develop their lessons.

``They're going to self-censor,'' Richmond said. ``This is going to have a chilling effect, not just here, but at schools around the country.''

Superintendent Bruce Dennis, who described the questioned activities as innocent, said he had expected complete vindication and was disturbed by the ruling.

``The notion of that paper-bag elephant head cutout being a violation I assumed to be ludicrous,'' Dennis said.

He said the school board had not decided whether to appeal.

The decision came 2 1/2 months after the end of a sometimes comical two-week trial with witnesses that included a yogi-numerologist, a psychic-telepath and the Rock Hound, a mineralogist who denied that crystals have special powers.

The tooth fairy was mentioned twice and when ``interspecies communication'' came up, the judge asked if that meant, ``Come here, Rover, lie down.''

But the potential of the case attracted serious attention. The liberal People for the American Way organization supported the school district, while the conservative American Catholic Lawyers Association took on the case for the families.

Brieant said the violations he found were not the result of school policy but of random acts initiated by individual school teachers, whom he said luxuriated in their academic freedom. He ordered the district to adopt a published policy with clear instructions to teachers about Supreme Court standards.

``We just wanted other religions to be subject to the same draconian limitations that Christianity and Judaism are subject to,'' said plaintiffs' lawyer James Bendell, who had called the curriculum a ``Twilight Zone.''