School District Wins Suit Filed Against It By Student Who Refused To Wear School-Issued Location Tracking ID Cards
from the another-'win'-for-school-administration----go-school! dept
Back in November we covered the story of a Texas student whose refusal to wear a school-issued ID card with an embedded RFID chip led to her suspension. Her family, along with the Rutherford Institute, took the school district to court, seeking a temporary restraining order which would allow the student to return to her school without wearing the Smart ID card.The student's parents cited religious objections to the ID card/tracking device and the filing pointed out that requiring her to wear the badge violated both her First Amendment rights (by compelling speech -- conveying a message she didn't agree with) and the Texas Freedom of Religion Act.
Considering the whole program itself was implemented almost solely in hopes of securing more funding by boosting attendance numbers and that the district had no specific policies in place when it began requiring the ID cards, one would hope that we'd be hearing of the student's return to school sans ID when the decision came down.
Unfortunately, the court's decision went the other way, and Andrea Hernandez has until January 18th to decide whether to wear the badge and return to her original school or transfer to another district school that has yet to implement the Smart ID cards.
A Texas high school student who claimed her student identification was the “Mark of the Beast” because it was implanted with a radio-frequency identification chip has lost her federal court bid Tuesday challenging her suspension for refusing to wear the card around her neck...Hernandez's family feels the ID card and embedded chip represent the "Mark of the Beast" as detailed in Revelations 13:16-18. The school's counteroffer -- to have Andrea wear the badge without the RFID chip -- was rejected by her family, which still felt the badge itself was representative of the Antichrist. Judge Garcia saw it differently, however.
[Judge Orlando Garcia] tentatively halted the suspension, but changed course Tuesday after concluding that the 15-year-old’s right of religion was not breached...
“The accommodation offered by the district is not only reasonable it removes plaintiff’s religious objection from legal scrutiny all together,” (.pdf) U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia wrote.The Rutherford Institute plans to appeal this decision, claiming this decision is "not permissible under our constitutional scheme" and turns the district court into "an arbiter of what is and is not religious."
The Institute has a point, for whatever it's worth. Hernandez's parents claimed that both the ID card and the embedded chip were offensive to their religious beliefs but the court here seems to have decided the compromise offered by the district negates the family's opinion on the chip-less ID card. The school's offer to transfer the student to another school within the district is also reasonable on its face, but it does take away a few options -- namely, the classes Hernandez was attending this specific school for.
The school's interest in having Hernandez only appear to support the program could probably use some further examination as well, although angling for outward complicity isn't a violation of rights in and of itself. It does "compel" speech in a way, but more than simply rubbing the First Amendment the wrong way, it sends a message about what's truly important to the school district: that students show "support" for the district's policies... even if they object to them.
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Filed Under: free speech, religion, rfid, school district, texas
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Kids are no saints as I wasn't in my early days (I was actually a lil devil) but some mischief is normal and even 'needed' for their normal development. My school implemented stricter rules, cameras and a bunch of other tech surveillance stuff few years after I left and I had the opportunity to go back there to give a presentation on the electric/energy sectors. I was shocked to see how behaved they were. In a negative way. Really.
Do we really want to monitor every single step from our kids? Because that's what the system will be used for, eventually.
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Well, As long as we get to track every civil servant from the President down, maybe it will be worth it.
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Huxley was right
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It's unfortunate too that they instead of boosting attendance through more practical means, they've chosen to go with the easy way out.
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Kids should go Batshit over this.Back in the Early 70's when I was her age and back in Lynn, Mass we would of Torn Classical HS Apart for this.
Protest this one !!! Kids have the Power !
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Not sure what wearing an ID card with an RFID chip has to do with conditioning, development, or thinking for oneself. It still isn't a good thing.
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FTFY
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That will help their future development \sarc
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It's the mindset of "Do as we say, not as we do" that will be the prevalent mindset of everything they do the rest of their lives. It's good to break them of hope now.
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Hopefully the school ID is not unique to their religious objection because they could get a lawyer in on this one.
If that family has a driver's licence, I don't see how this is different. You have a picture ID that assigns a number to your person, for the purpose to allow you to legally _______. In one case it's operate a motor vehicle, in the other it is attend a specific school and the classes they hold.
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Some religious-minded folks see this as a prelude to RFID technology embedded in your skin that allows for card-less transactions.
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As for being scared of RFID, I think being scared of tattoo ink and QR codes are more relevent.
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I live in Rochester, NY and I've seen hundreds of case studies on Kodak and Xerox. I would argue that as a percentage of revenue either of them was more wasteful than the government.
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(Yes, I'm pedantic.)
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The school offered to remove the RFID and that should be the end of this case. I think the judge is on the right side of the issue when it comes to reason. If it is legally correct is not for me to decide.
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now it's time for the trolls to respond to me with "BUT SHE IS ATTENDING A PUBLIC SCHOOL THEY CAN DO ANYTHING THEY WANT TO HER!!! CHILDREN AREN'T REAL PEOPLE YET!!!"
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That's about the worst possible way to attack the chips as unconstitutional. To anyone who's not religious that kind of an argument about the 'mark of the beast' just makes you look insane.
How about suing over the chips being a violation of your right to privacy? And illegal searching. And psychological harm from treating students like criminals we have to monitor with a 'nicer' version of the ankle bracelet tracker.
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Courts should not decide the ‘sanity’ of a person’s religious beliefs unless that person uses said beliefs as the justification for committing a crime.
The family’s religious beliefs made them uncomfortable about their child wearing the badge (RFID chip or not), and the school should have respected their beliefs and found a way to allow the child to continue attending school without the badge or the RFID chip.
The school basically gave the family two choices: compromise your religious beliefs or take your kid elsewhere.
How would you feel if put in the same position?
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I agree, but in this situation, the school could have made an accomodation not just for this family, but for any family who had an objection to the badge and RFID chip for any reason.
The validity of this family’s belief does not excuse the school from trying to respect said beliefs. Its offered compromise comes off as an attempt to have the family either compromise their beliefs (no matter how ‘insane’ those beliefs may seem to you) or pull their child out of said school because of their beliefs.
I’d have a hard time defending the family if their beliefs called for their kid to bully others or commit acts of violence in the name of whatever deity they worship. In this specific instance, however, their beliefs seem far more personal and have nothing to do with bringing harm to others.
I don’t identify as a religious person, and even I see this as a violation of the First Amendment.
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What about the families who proclaim that homework and detention violate their beliefs? Female teachers and science classes?
You have to draw the line somewhere. Everyone has a set of personal beliefs and you can't expect every institution to constantly bend over backwards to satisfy every claim (from wacky to mundane) that by nature cannot be argued against.
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Again, I agree. Religious beliefs should not become an excuse to sidestep the ‘unpleasantries’ of life.
With that said: I don’t see how any usage of the badge and RFID chip outweighs the rights of a person to follow their religious beliefs.
I could understand the school’s objection to this accomodation if it could justify the badge/chip system as a mandatory part of the school experience, but it can’t do that because hundreds of other schools in this country alone have no such system in place.
I see no reason why the school could not allow this student, or any other, to attend without the badge.
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I think the argument would have gone much further in court if the lawyer had argued why NO student should be wearing the RFIDs rather than why THIS student shouldn't be expected to. Also, determining the validity of someones beliefs is part of being a judge. After all, Rastafarians can't smoke pot in the US and Satanists can't murder babies (or whatever it is Satanists do that would normally be illegal).
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The school offered a special lanyard with the RFID tag removed, in the hopes to put a damper on the whole situation. The student’s father refused the deal, however, because it came with strings attached.
“He told me in a meeting that if my daughter would proudly wear her student ID card around her neck so everyone could see, he would be able to quietly remove her chip from her student ID card,” Steve Hernandez told WND. “He went on to say as part of the accommodation my daughter and I would have to agree to stop criticizing the program and publicly support … it.
Can we at least agree that THIS part is wrong? To force someone to publicly support a program that they oppose?
At least by forcing this issue to the courts, the student was able to make her opposition known. IMO she should drop the case now. She only has to wear a normal badge, not an RFID badge, and that by itself does not violate her rights even if she opposes it for other reasons. And now that it's gone through the courts, they aren't going to be able to force her to publicly support the program.
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These are children who are being conditioned to accept being branded like cattle as though normal behavior. This school district went along with the program purely for the sake of profit; the children are being manipulated as a means to that end. Religious or not, exploiting children for profit's sake constitutes a violation of their rights.
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After all, if I believe that murdering people is really just helping them meet Jesus faster the FACT that they are now dead outweighs my believe and I'll be forced to go to jail.
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The solution I probably would have done is cut the chip out, leave the badge intact, put the chip literally anywhere but in the badge or on my person.
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Almost like someone in charge at the school would have to actually pay attention then! Ahh!
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They expected the family to publicly support a program they detest, to get a pass out of the program.
This is not the first time this systems fallen afoul.
And this was all to make money, where did they get the money to pay AT&T to run the program for them?
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A good prank would be for a whole class to turn up with the same RFID tag ID.
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Quit trying to provoke and divide.
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/troll
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Just remember
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Seperate but equal?
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The big flaw in your argument is that segregation was ended because segregation is inherently bad; in fact, what was ruled as being illegal was segregation BASED ON race, creed, age, etc.
In this case the school wasn't attempting to segregate students at all, let alone based on a protected class of individual. If the lawyer had argued that this family was practicing a specific religion, say "Anti-Christ-is-everywhereians", and that group had been targeted, it might have helped the case.
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Huh? You think AGE-based segregation is illegal? Please tell that to every single elementary, middle, and high school in the country. And when did I say that segregation was inherently good or bad?
Anyway. If this judge's logic had been used, nobody would have had standing to sue about (racial) segregation in the first place, since apparently one is not "harmed" by being forced to attend an inferior school. (And I'm assuming that the magnet school was superior to the normal high school - therefore the normal high school can be considered inferior to it.)
"If the lawyer had argued that this family was practicing a specific religion, say "Anti-Christ-is-everywhereians", and that group had been targeted, it might have helped the case."
If they could prove THAT, it would have been a slam dunk win, yes. Obviously that wasn't the case.
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Your school example is both an attempt to be condescending and not an example of segregation in the legal since of "separate but equal."
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Imagine if the school had denied the magnet school to her because she was a girl. Obviously illegal - but she has to show harm in order to get it struck down. If there is no harm in getting kicked out of that school, nobody has standing to sue and the district would be free to continue that policy, or just about any policy they wanted.
Well, I guess my main problem is this. If there is no harm from changing schools, then the school would not have to make ANY accommodation to the student other than allowing a transfer. They wouldn't have had to offer the option of wearing the non-RFID badge, because if the transfer caused no harm, then the transfer itself would be the only accommodation needed. And I don't think that's right.
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What?
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I 100% agree with the court here, and the district's offering to remove the RFID chip. (I have a problem with tracking someone with no opt out.)
This girl needs a big fat reality-check slap to the face. You can claim you're against ANYTHING for religious reasons.
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It's not for security reasons. It's to track attendance. Technically that student smoking in the stairwell is "at school" and they want to be sure to get the funding for that student. http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120907/08595920309/rfid-tagging-students-is-all-about-money.shtml
It's useless for security for several reasons. The badges are never swiped to gain access. The RFID system is not going to track anyone NOT wearing the badge - which includes every single person NOT authorized to be at the school, and any student that takes off the badge so as not to be caught being somewhere they shouldn't be. Oh, and the cards are unencrypted. Someone could make a clone of a badge if a student so much as walked near them.
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The effectiveness or implimentation of their badge system, no matter how horrible, is not the issue at hand anyways. Neither is the school's motive behind accounting for the kids more accurately.
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Assume you have a child in a school that requires all students and employees to wear a badge.
Now assume that your child has suffered an injury and the school needs you to come in and pick him up.
How would you feel if you walked into the school to pick up your hurt child and a security guard stopped you because you don’t have a badge?
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True.
"The effectiveness or implimentation of their badge system, no matter how horrible, is not the issue at hand anyways. Neither is the school's motive behind accounting for the kids more accurately."
Effectiveness becomes relevant when deciding which side will be harmed the most. Motive is important because IF the school is NOT using the badges for security, then there is no valid reason to force the student to wear the non-RFID badge.
Of course the judge here somehow decided that moving the student to another school would cause ZERO harm, so it didn't really come up in the ruling.
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Assigning worth to a religious belief is not going to work well. It really comes down to the girl having a choice:
School A where they have a policy she doesn't like, but classes she wants
School B where they have a policy she does like, but is missing the classes she wants
There's even the option of just being homeschooled, which is an option that many kids take based on their parents objections to public school policies.
The practice of using badges in the first place is better addressed by more concrete issues such as the waste of funds caused by them being ID badges with RFID over laminated paper, when the benefits of ID badges are not being used.
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So if a student's religion mandated that they have a head covering but the school uniform/dress code prohibited head coverings, your solution would be to have the student find another school? And you think that making a student transfer away from a magnet school into a regular school that didn't offer the same classes would cause zero harm to the student?
Wouldn't it be more reasonable to allow the student to just have the head covering? Without looking, I'm guessing that courts have ruled that way on that exact issue. If there aren't any rulings, it's because the schools HAVE allowed the covering when requested, without it needing to go to court.
"There's even the option of just being homeschooled, which is an option that many kids take based on their parents objections to public school policies. "
That's not a reasonable option for many people, and not one the state can force them to take in any case.
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Furthermore, the fact that the school offered to let her wear a dummy badge if she appeared to support the program, MAKES this a first amendment speech issue even if the first amendment religious issue is rejected. Consider: She would have been allowed to attend the school without the tracker, if she professed support for the program. I don't care WHAT the underlying issue is, this is unacceptable for a public school.
The judge actually says there is "no harm" to the student. Really? She now has the choice of violating her religious beliefs or getting pulled out of her classes mid-year and put in a school where some of those classes are not even offered. Given the nature of education, I would call this IRREPARABLE harm. How could the school undo this a year later? Put her back in the class and hope she didn't forget anything?
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Basically this guy showed up in court, screamed mark of the beast over and over, and thought it would be an easy win. I actually agree with your arguments but these people had ulterior motives. They didn't want to win on the liberal definition of free speech or on the education harm. They wanted a court to agree this was the mark of the beast to make a broad political statement.
I'm about done with parents using their children and the school system in an effort to politicize education. There are real problems in the world and having every religious whack-job in the country tied up in court to win a Pyrrhic victory is really starting to grind my gears.
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They were never going to get a court to agree to that. The best they could do is get a court to agree that THEY believed that it was the mark of the beast.
"I actually agree with your arguments but these people had ulterior motives."
Ugh. I want to say the motives of the parents don't matter, but since this is a religious freedom thing, the motives DO matter - but only as to whether this was a legitimately held religious belief. If it was, the motives beyond THAT do not matter. You can't just rule against people you don't like, because precedents get set and suddenly the law is interpreted in bad ways.
The end result verdict is probably correct. The student can either wear a non-RFID badge, or go to another school. My problem is more with the logic used to get there. Transferring a student to a school that doesn't offer the same classes DOES cause harm to the student.
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Yes, but the Court found that claim to be unpersuasive. The Court said that since Hernandez did not have a problem with the RFID-less card in the past, her objection to an RFID-less card today was clearly secular and not religious. From the ruling:
"Plaintiff does not contend that she has a "sincerely held religious belief" that wearing the badge without a chip is still the mark of the beast. And only with prompting by her counsel did A.H. agree that wearing the badge without a chip would mean she has to "bear false witness" to a program that she disagrees with. Thus, Plaintiff's objection to wearing a badge without a chip is not
grounded in her religious beliefs.
Again, Plaintiff has been wearing a student ID badge for several years. She doesn't object to wearing her old ID badge, yet she objects to the new ID badge issued by Jay H.S. despite the fact that the chip has been removed. Plaintiff's objection to wearing the Smart ID badge without a chip is clearly a secular choice, rather than a religious concern."
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Silly
I bet this kid's parents aren't refusing to carry a drivers license-- and foregoing driving-- because they think it marks them for Lucifer. And if they are driving without a license, no court will accept that as a valid defense if they get arrested for it.
The kid's gonna have to carry ID at some point if she wants to live in modern society. Best she get used to it now.
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Yeah F that...
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Sense in the Courtroom
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A School in Conflict.
I have a certain vicarious knowledge of this kind of thing, as my kid sister went to such a school about thirty-five years ago. The worst high school in Cincinnati happened to be adjacent to the University of Cincinnati campus, between Fraternity Row and the main off-campus shopping district. A curious juxtaposition (*). Well, they inserted a magnet school, a City-Wide Learning Center, whose main draw was that students could take whatever college courses at the university that they were qualified for. The University of Cincinnati has its own community colleges, as well as various graduate schools, so that a talented high school student could find a way to meet practically every requirement for a high school diploma. My understanding is that the only really firm requirements were High School English, Gym, and stuff like that. Of course, the way to get admitted to the City-Wide Learning Center was to demonstrate that one needed to take college courses of a type which were flatly not available in high school, e.g. professional courses in the art or music schools, or advanced courses in the Arts and Sciences college, e.g. advanced mathematics, hard science, and foreign language courses which the average freshman was not eligible for. The social dynamics were a bit curious, as one might imagine.
(*) Cincinnati's geography is a bit odd. Over geological time, the Ohio River has cut a sort of canyon about three hundred feet deep in a "semi-plain," or "glacial moraine." They have hills so steep that their sides frequently become near-cliffs a couple of hundred feet high. The University of Cincinnati is in a neighborhood named Clifton, sitting on top of cliffs looking down a couple of hundred feet to the slums around the railroad yard, with few streets connecting down to the area below the cliffs. Over a period of years, the university had expanded, together with its associated facilities, student housing, etc., to the point that it had driven out most of the kind of people who would have children to send to school, but the school board still had a high school there. The high school's district had been adjusted to include the slums down below, but the hill created enough of a disconnect to make the hilltop a fairly posh neighborhood.
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EV1 Desfire
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Mifare desfire
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