The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal by a high school student who sought to sue her school for banning the instrumental version of “Ave Maria” at her 2006 graduation. Therefore, the decision of the Ninth Circuit stands: the court agreed with school administrators that the song was obviously religious.
Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on this today:
Now that students need to be protected from hearing “Ave Maria,” what will school administrators do if there is a request to play Beethoven’s “Missa Solemnis” at a school concert? Will they resort to another gag order? What if the request is to play Duke Ellington’s “Sacred Concert”? Will they censor that one, too?
The same civil libertarians who routinely defend obscene speech in high schools offered no help to this student. In other words, “Ave Maria” is obscene speech to them—not the “F” word. And they say they don’t make moral judgments.
