Georgia school board should not have punished pastor for tax hike opposition
Do you think your taxes are too high? Would you rather they didn’t grow higher? Many of us throughout Georgia share that opinion, and we’re not above sharing it with others from time to time, particularly as ballot measures grow heated and elections draw nigh.
Rev. Gady Youmans expressed his personal view that a proposed property tax increase in his local school district was unnecessary — and the youth in his community were punished for his conviction — that is until a federal court temporarily put a stop to that retaliation on July 30 while a lawsuit against the district continues.
Youmans is a pastor at Word of Life Baptist Church and the founder, executive director, and lead teacher of the Sweet Onion Christian Learning Center — both in Toombs County.
For more than a decade, Sweet Onion has offered optional, free, off-campus religious instruction to students at nearby Vidalia High School. This arrangement is known as a “released time” program, and students can earn elective credit for participating.
Such programs are available throughout the state. In the course of those 10-plus years, Sweet Onion has recorded no complaints about the program; indeed, students and parents alike speak highly of both the pastor himself and what he’s teaching at the learning center.
Here’s what caused board to cancel the program
On two Facebook posts published last September, Youmans referenced the school board tax and his objections to it, as part of his larger, ongoing concerns about the over-bureaucratization of the Vidalia City School System.
His problem, he made clear, in both the posts and ensuing conversations, is not with any particular individual teacher or administrator. He didn’t cite anyone by name.
Still, the school board took particular exception to the pastor’s post in a manner that should concern all Georgians.
Deciding to examine Youmans’ Sweet Onion center a little more closely, the board members were apparently surprised to learn that a Christian learning center presents “a particular interpretation of the Bible,” and not in a “neutral or well-balanced manner.”
Of course, what Youmans is teaching is the same thing he’s been teaching for the last decade, and it’s what he told the board he’d be teaching when he first proposed his curriculum.
Nothing has changed except some people’s frustration with the pastor’s political point of view.
Youmans is certainly within his rights as a citizen of a free republic to think and say what he wants on his personal Facebook page about political goings-on and proposed taxes in his county.
And, he has a right to teach students off campus from his Christian perspective. But the school board couldn’t accept that.
So, deeming the pastor’s comments and teaching unacceptable, they took the draconian step of canceling the Sweet Onion program.
If students still want religious education for elective credit, the board says, they may take classes at nearby Brewton-Parker Christian University - where the faculty also present “a particular interpretation of the Bible.” (Youmans teaches there, too).
Court should uphold pastor’s 1st Amendment rights
The board members are allowed their own point of view when it comes to tax increases and how their schools are run, but there’s no reason to punish Youmans over differences with his point of view.
Simply put, what the board’s doing isn’t right - and it certainly isn’t constitutional. Whether their actions are couched as retaliation for the reverend’s free speech, or as discrimination against his religious beliefs, the First Amendment is clearly on the pastor’s side.
The new injunction against the school district is a step in the right direction. The only losers have been the high school students who have been participating in the program.
Lessons that have been a personal blessing to them, and that have contributed to the molding and deepening of their character as future citizens and community leaders, were removed because one group of adults doesn’t like what another adult has to say.
That’s the reason Youmans, with the help of Alliance Defending Freedom, sued the school district - to affirm his constitutionally protected freedoms and restore the option of religious education to the students of Vidalia High - and, by extension, provide support to any other students in Georgia who encounter a school district willing to ignore such freedoms.
The court ruling means that the district must reinstate Youmans’ program and respect his freedom of speech for now. Here’s hoping, for the sake of the kids and all who love free speech, that the final outcome will make this permanent.
Philip A. Sechler is senior counsel and director of the Center for Free Speech at Alliance Defending Freedom (@ADFLegal), which is representing Rev. Gady Youmans.
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