Murrieta Lawyer Defends Student Against Teacher's 'Anti-Christian' Semantics

“As long as we have blood to give, we will fight.”

Murrieta lawyer Robert Tyler was speaking of his case representing student Chad Farnan, who sued his high school history teacher for making disparaging comments about religion.

The case made national headlines and still keeps internet message boards abuzz in polarized, passionate debate. Both sides are resolute to see the case go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Its next stop along that route is a hearing before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena today.

Now a college freshman at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Farnan said he’s trying to stay focused on his studies at school, where he’s in the process of switching his major from business to computer science.

“I'm just working hard in the present right now to make sure I graduate with good grades, so I can possibly go to graduate school,” he said.

Farnan may not be thinking about the precedent-setting nature of his case, but the lawyers on both sides sure are.

“We believe this (case) has positive precedence for the whole country,” said Tyler, who runs Advocates for Faith and Freedom, a nonprofit firm in Murrieta which takes on cases that challenge religious liberties.

While a student in James Corbett’s 2007 AP European history class at Capistrano Valley High School in Mission Viejo, Farnan taped hours of the teacher’s lessons, which were also peppered with discussions of current events. Corbett wove his opinions about religion--Christianity in particular--and conservative thought throughout his daily classes.

Farnan included 20 of what he thought were outrageous comments in a lawsuit he filed against Corbett and the Capistrano Unified School District, and he convinced a federal judge agreed that at least one of them--the statement that creationism is “religious, superstitious nonsense”--was unconstitutional.

Corbett has hired Erwin Chemerinsky, dean at UC Irvine’s School of Law, to lead his appellate team. He said he’s concerned that Farnan’s case may have a chilling effect on academic freedom and even on recruiting teachers into the profession.

“No teacher in the history of the United States has been found violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Teachers will be tremendously chilled. The courts should be very reluctant to impose money damages on teachers.”

Meanwhile, the debate continues online, with some declaring Farnan and his parents to be religious fanatics, and others calling Corbett a bully.

The hubbub began May 1, 2009, when District Court Judge James V. Selna in Santa Ana ruled that one of many statements Farnan recorded during Corbett’s AP European history classes in the fall of 2007 violated the student’s First Amendment rights.

That might sound confusing, as Corbett was the one doing the talking, but this is not a case about Corbett’s free-speech rights. This case centers on the very first words of the First Amendment:  “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”

The U.S. Supreme Court has found that public officials who demonstrate an open hostility toward a religion or a “religion of secularism” are just as guilty of violating the “Establishment Clause” as public officials who proselytize a religion, according to Selna’s decision in the case.

“This case reflects the tension between the constitutional rights of a student and the demands of higher education as reflected in the Advanced Placement European History course in which Farnan enrolled,” Selna wrote in a “afterward” to his written decision, which released the school district from any liability in the matter.

“It also reflects a tension between Farnan’s deeply-held religious beliefs and the need for government, particularly schools, to carry out their duties free of the strictures of any particular religious or philosophical belief system.  The Constitution recognizes both sides of the equation.”

Corbett wrote an editorial right after the ruling and distributed it to a number of websites. “Every teacher in California (this was a federal case after all) now works with the knowledge that any student, at any time, and in violation of California law, can sneak a tape recorder into a classroom, record the teacher and use an out-of-context, five-second comment as a bludgeon to threaten, to intimidate and, ultimately, to destroy the teacher’s career and good name,” he wrote.

Tyler, Farnan’s lawyer, said the comments were not out of context, and indeed, Selna takes considerable efforts in his ruling to reconstruct many of the comments’ contexts.

Tyler added that he would not have pursued this case had Corbett only made a comment here or there. Because there was a constant barrage of derogatory remarks, the teacher created an “impermissibly hostile” learning environment for students who did not agree with his point of view, Tyler wrote in his filings with the 9th Circuit.

“If the Establishment Clause can be used to silence people of faith, because the pendulum swings both ways, it must also apply to Dr. Corbett,” Tyler told Patch.

Chemerinsky said he doesn’t see how Corbett’s statements can be seen as a violation of the Establishment Clause.

“Being hostile to religion is not the same as being critical of religion,” he said. Corbett’s remarks err on the side of criticism.

Corbett has publicly criticized Tyler’s firm. On a website called the Sensuous Curmudgeon, Corbett wrote of Advocates for Faith and Freedom: “Their business model does not require winning lawsuits. In my case, they gained tens of thousands of dollars, probably hundreds of thousands (I don’t know the actual amount) through donations to their ‘ministry’ from fundraising appeals on O’Reilly, Hannity, Fox News Sunday, at expensive fundraisers at the Nixon Library and on their website.”

Tyler denied his firm is only using this case as a money-maker for his firm, saying it’s an “absolute joke.” Farnan’s case is the very reason his firm exists. Advocates did raise a little money, but nothing like Corbett claims, and certainly not enough to cover the bills. The lawyers on staff there also work in a regular legal practice called Tyler & Monk, where they take mostly business law cases.

“We do this because we’re passionate,” he said.