{"id":16719,"date":"2023-02-02T10:04:39","date_gmt":"2023-02-02T15:04:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?p=16719"},"modified":"2023-03-16T16:14:48","modified_gmt":"2023-03-16T20:14:48","slug":"mississippi-student-wins-right-to-wear-jesus-loves-me-face-mask-to-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2023\/02\/mississippi-student-wins-right-to-wear-jesus-loves-me-face-mask-to-school","title":{"rendered":"Mississippi Student Wins Right to Wear &#8216;Jesus Loves Me&#8217; Face Mask to School"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_16722\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-16722\" style=\"width: 703px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/140\/2023\/02\/lydia-booth-credit-alliance-defending-freedom.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-16722\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/140\/2023\/02\/lydia-booth-credit-alliance-defending-freedom.png\" alt=\"lydia booth\" width=\"703\" height=\"528\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-16722\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Alliance Defending Freedom<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>A Mississippi school district has agreed to change a policy banning political or religious speech that led to a third-grade student being barred from wearing a face mask with the message \u201cJesus Loves Me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>During the coronavirus pandemic, the Simpson County School District prohibited elementary school student Lydia Booth from wearing the face mask because of its Christian message.<\/p>\n<p>Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal nonprofit specializing in religious freedom cases representing Booth, announced the school district had reversed its decision. The district will now allow the child to wear her \u201cJesus Loves Me\u201d face mask as part of a settlement agreement ending a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/adflegal.org\/sites\/default\/files\/2020-11\/L.B.%20v.%20Simpson%20County%20School%20District%20-%20Complaint.pdf\">federal lawsuit<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo student should be singled out for peacefully expressing her religious beliefs,\u201d said ADF Senior Counsel Tyson Langhofer, director of the ADF Center for Academic Freedom. Today\u2019s students will be tomorrow\u2019s legislators, judges, educators and voters. That\u2019s why it\u2019s so important that public schools demonstrate the First Amendment values they are supposed to be teaching to students.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In November 2020, the ADF filed the lawsuit on behalf of the Booth family in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi.<\/p>\n<p>The litigation stemmed from an incident on Oct. 13, 2020, in which school officials told the then-third-grade student that she was not allowed to wear a face mask with the statement \u201cJesus Loves Me\u201d because the school system prohibited face masks that had religious or political messages on them.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDefendants allow students at SCS to wear masks and other clothing with a wide variety of expressive messages during school, including \u2018Black Lives Matter\u2019 and masks and shirts promoting many sports teams,\u201d<a href=\"https:\/\/www.christianpost.com\/news\/student-sues-miss-school-district-jesus-loves-me-facemask-ban.html\">\u00a0read the suit.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cDefendants\u2019 Religious Speech Policy and practice are overbroad because they sweep within their ambit protected First Amendment expression.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For his part, Simpson County Schools Superintendent Greg Paes\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1q09nOdDJuxHP9D_c877phANVIIok6zNR\/view\">sent a letter\u00a0<\/a>to families and staff shortly after the incident, assuring them that the school district \u201cdoes not discriminate based on race, color, national origin, sex, religion, disability, marital status or age in admission or access to, or treatment of employment in, its programs or activities.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMasks cannot display political, religious, sexual or any inappropriate symbols, gestures or statements that may be offensive, disruptive or deemed distractive to the school environment,\u201d wrote Paes at the time.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis expectation was outlined in our restart plan and is specific to masks only. The principal and Superintendent will be the final authority on the appropriateness of any mask worn to school. Wearing school colors, the school mascot, or simply having a blank mask is encouraged.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Mississippi school district has agreed to change a policy banning political or religious speech that led to a third-grade student being barred from wearing a face mask with the message \u201cJesus Loves Me.\u201d During the coronavirus pandemic, the Simpson County School District prohibited elementary school student Lydia Booth from wearing the face mask because&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":657,"featured_media":16722,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[157,32,976],"tags":[3546,3549],"class_list":["post-16719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bible","category-christian","category-free-speech","tag-alliance-defending-freedom","tag-jesus-loves-me"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Mississippi Student Wins Right to Wear &#039;Jesus Loves Me&#039; Face Mask to School<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Mississippi student Lydia Booth was barred from wearing her &#039;Jesus Loves Me&#039; mask during the pandemic. Now, she&#039;s allowed to wear her mask.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2023\/02\/mississippi-student-wins-right-to-wear-jesus-loves-me-face-mask-to-school\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mississippi Student Wins Right to Wear &#039;Jesus Loves Me&#039; Face Mask to School\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Mississippi student Lydia Booth was barred from wearing her &#039;Jesus Loves Me&#039; mask during the pandemic. 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