LAS VEGAS, Nev. (BP)–School officials edited the script of Brittany McComb’s graduation speech before she gave it, removing six references to God and two biblical references. But when she chose to use such language anyway, school officials turned down the microphone in the midst of her address to graduates June 15.
McComb, one of three valedictorians at Foothill High School in Las Vegas, Nev., said she was not surprised when she was told not to talk about God during the school-sponsored event because “even in the Bible it says that the name of Jesus will be hated.”
“But the thing is, it is freedom of speech, so I was upset,” McComb said June 20 on the “Jay Sekulow Live!” radio program. “I was really leery about having to defy authority…. It took me a while, but I answer to a higher authority and it’s my freedom of speech, and I had to come to terms with that.”
School officials told McComb her address would be offensive to some people, but she said some things people say are offensive to her yet she respects their right to express their views.
“My message was all about love and it was all about my personal experience,” she said. “That’s not offensive.”
When administrators noticed McComb was deviating from the pre-approved text, they turned down her voice. But news reports indicate that jeers erupted from the nearly 400 graduates and their families in response to the school’s action and in support of McComb.
“I was hoping they were going to turn it back on,” she told Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice. “… But God had bigger plans. It was kind of exciting, because everybody was upset.
“It was just nice to see people standing up for God, number one, and then freedom of speech, number two,” McComb added. “There was an atheist that called in to one of the news stations saying that I should have been able to talk and that they shouldn’t have turned off my microphone. And he doesn’t even believe in God.”
Part of God’s “bigger plans” is that McComb now has had opportunities to express her faith in Jesus Christ through national media outlets.
“I went through four years of school at Foothill and they taught me logic and they taught me freedom of speech,” McComb told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in comments picked up by the Associated Press. “God’s the biggest part of my life. Just like other valedictorians thank their parents, I wanted to thank my Lord and Savior.”
Allen Lichtenstein, general counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, said he read McComb’s unedited speech and agreed with school officials’ decision to censor it.
“There should be no controversy here,” he said. “It’s important for people to understand that a student was given a school-sponsored forum by a school and therefore, in essence, it was a school-sponsored speech.”
In 2003 the Clark County School Board, which governs McComb’s high school, amended regulations regarding religious speech, the Review-Journal reported, prohibiting district officials from organizing prayer at graduation or selecting speakers in a manner that favors religious speech.
But if students or speakers are selected “on the basis of genuinely neutral, evenhanded criteria,” then their speech “may not be restricted because of its religious (or anti-religious) content.” The school “may make appropriate neutral disclaimers to clarify that such speech is not school sponsored,” the guidelines say.
“We review the speeches and tell them they may not proselytize,” Bill Hoffman, the district’s legal counsel, told the Review-Journal. “We encourage people to talk about religion and the impact on their lives. But when that discussion crosses over to become proselytizing, then we tell students they can’t do that.”
McComb said she believes her audience was wise enough to realize she was expressing her opinions, not preaching. Sekulow told her she was within the bounds of the First Amendment.
“You had the right to make that speech,” he said during his radio program. “You had the right to include a reference to your faith. You had the right to include a reference to Jesus. And you should not have been censored. And the ACLU and the school district here is absolutely wrong.”
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