BATON ROUGE, La. — After attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund filed a lawsuit Tuesday in federal court, officials at a Baton Rouge magnet school reversed course and will now allow a Christian student the right to use school buses for a field trip for her Christian club. Though school officials had initially denied the Christian student club, they did allow the use of school transportation for field trips for other student groups on campus, including the D.A.R.E. club and the Arabic club.

“Christian student groups should be allowed access to the same benefits that other student groups receive,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel David Cortman. “The Constitution does not allow school officials at Baton Rouge Magnet High School to discriminate against this student group merely because it is Christian in nature. We are pleased that the school has decided to reverse course and do the right thing.”

The student represented by ADF attorneys formed a Christian student group called One Way Club and, as other student clubs on campus are allowed to do, the student submitted a request for the club to participate in a field trip to an event on Dec. 5. As part of the request, the student asked that the One Way Club be allowed to use school buses to transport interested students to and from the event. School officials denied the request. ADF attorneys also told school officials that absent a reversal of their decision, ADF attorneys would be filing for a temporary restraining order so that the Christian club would be able to use the school buses for the December field trip.

“Many of the students in the One Way Club are under age 16 and are therefore unable to drive themselves to the event,” said Cortman. “Also, school officials had not afforded the customary excused absence for this group to attend its field trip, though it allows other groups at the school to receive an excused absence for their field trips. Now that the double standard will be remedied for the Dec. 5 field trip, we are also hopeful that this will resolve the lawsuit as well.”