Religious Freedom and Sikh School Children

The children are members of the Khalsa Sikh faith -- a religion that is 500 years old and practiced by 18 million people world-wide. Among the religious requirements of the Sikhs is that they wear - at all times -- a small ceremonial knife called a kirpan.

In school districts throughout the U.S. and Canada, Sikh students are allowed to wear their kirpan as an accommodation to the free exercise of religion. A Canadian study concluded that there has never been a single reported incident of kirpan-related violence in any school anywhere.

Despite those facts, and our nation's two hundred year-old commitment to the free exercise of religion, the Livingston School District last winter barred the children from going to school. The family turned to the ACLU and sued. After a series of court battles, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the children back to school in September.

Sure it makes sense for school districts to ban weapons from school premises. Violence in our schools is a serious problem. We want safe schools but we want schools that respect important freedoms -- including religious liberty.

"Weapons" are excluded from school in order to promote safety. But if weapons are defined as anything with the potential to harm, then we'd ban lots of items found on school grounds -- like baseball bats, compasses, and scissors -- long before kirpans.

The Kirpans these children wear are shorter and duller than most butter knives and are stitched down so tightly in their sheaths, that even adult members of the Livingston School Board could not remove them. The conflict the district painted between religious liberty and school safety missed the point.

History teaches us that intolerance is a source of violence, not its cure. Respecting diversity, on the other hand, is one of the surest ways to the peaceful world in which we all should strive to live. Letting the Livingston students go back to school with their kirpans may be only a small step on the road to such a world, but it is a step in the right direction.

With a perspective, I'm Dorothy Ehrlich.

Dorothy Ehrlich is the Executive Director of the ACLU of Northern California.