Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, REMEDIES, DAMAGES—D. Conn.: Teacher who insisted on displaying crucifix in class unlikely to succeed on First Amendment claims, (Nov 5, 2025)

By Kathleen Kapusta, J.D.

The speech rights of public school employees are not “so boundless that they may deliver any message to anyone anytime they wish.”

A public school teacher in Connecticut who refused, after several requests, to remove or relocate a foot-high crucifix from her classroom wall and who was, as a result, reassigned to a non-teaching role, is unlikely to succeed on her claim the display constituted speech as a private citizen rather than pursuant to her job duties and thus on her free speech claim, a federal court in Connecticut ruled. Nor is she likely to prevail in showing it was unreasonable for the school district to conclude that it risked liability for an Establishment Clause violation had it permitted her to hang the crucifix on the classroom wall during instructional time, said the court, denying her motion for a preliminary injunction (Arroyo-Castro v. Gasper, No. 3:25-CV-00153 (SFR) (D. Conn. Nov. 3, 2025)).

Crucifix. The teacher, who had primarily taught third and fourth graders in the district since 2003, was assigned to teach seventh grade social studies for the 2024-2025 school year. In decorating her new classroom walls, the teacher displayed, among other things, a crucifix on a wall near her desk. It was not part of the seventh-grade social studies curriculum, and it was not approved as a learning aid. According to the teacher, it was a personal expressive item that helped make the classroom more conducive to learning.

Complaints. After two students complained that the teacher was exposing them to religion in the classroom, the vice principal and another staff member told her to remove the crucifix because “any permanent displays of religious symbols are prohibited from public schools, based on the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.” The teacher refused and was again directed to remove the crucifix.

After a second refusal, and a warning that she faced suspension, district personnel removed the crucifix and suspended the teacher for two days to reflect on whether it was in her “best interest” to keep hanging the crucifix on the wall. Not only did she notify the district that she could not conceal the crucifix, as the district had suggested, but she also sent a text message via the student communication portal that said: “I have been placed on Administrative Leave for refusing to remove a Crucifix from my desk area. The lesson to learn here is that doing what is right is not always easy.”

Reassigned. When the teacher, at yet another meeting, again refused to remove or relocate the crucifix, she was reassigned to a non-teaching role. She then sued district personnel, asserting free speech and Free Exercise Clause claims and sought injunctive and equitable relief.

Free speech. Regarding the teacher’s free speech claim, the court noted that the parties disputed whether she displayed the crucifix on the classroom wall pursuant to her official duties or as a private citizen. Finding that she displayed the crucifix in the course of performing one of her core duties as a teacher, the court noted that district policy instructs teachers to consider the “physical aspects of [the] classroom” with “both individual students’ needs and instructional goals in mind”—given the impact that the physical classroom environment has on learning.”

And while she asserted that the crucifix was a personal expressive item, she also stated that displaying such items makes the classroom environment more conducive to learning because the items humanize the teacher to their students. “In that way,” said the court, she “was acting pursuant to her official duties as a teacher by displaying the items.”

The court also rejected her argument that the school had created a “zone of personal expression by and around the teachers’ desks” in which teachers could keep personal expressive items. But not only was there no clear demarcation of such a zone in pictures she provided, the court found it difficult to categorize items near the teachers’ desks as personal or non-personal, particularly without any definition of the term. Accordingly, based on the existing factual record, the court found she was unlikely to prevail on her claim her display of the crucifix on the wall of the classroom constitutes speech as a private citizen rather than pursuant to her job duties as a teacher and thus she was unlikely to prevail on her free speech claim.

Free exercise claim. The teacher also argued that the defendants violated her rights under the Free Exercise Clause by requiring her to remove the crucifix from the classroom wall and by punishing her for refusing to do so. According to the teacher, she “sincerely believes that her religion compels her to display her crucifix, not hide it under her desktop” and stifling “her religious expression through concealment of the crucifix ‘would be an affront to [her] faith.’”

In arguing for strict scrutiny review, she contended that the defendants did not act neutrally because they singled out her expressive display of a personal item because of its religious nature and they did not act pursuant to a generally applicable policy because they exercised “unbound discretion with regard to teachers’ personal expressive displays in their workspaces.” In response, the defendants asserted that because the case involved religious expression, the Pickering-Garcetti framework applied to both her free speech and free exercise claims.

As issue, said the court, was whether categorizing the crucifix display as expression pursuant to official duties at step one of the Pickering-Garcetti framework precludes the teacher’s free exercise claim. Her claims, the court observed, “fully overlap in the sense that the religious exercise that [she] says is infringed is necessarily communicative.” While she argued that she engages in religious exercise with her display that includes “non-communicative exercise such as praying with it during lunch breaks and viewing it periodically when the task of teaching proves particularly stressful,” the defendants, the court noted, did not prohibit her from displaying the crucifix during noninstructional time such as lunch breaks but rather sought to prevent the display’s communication of a message to students in the classroom.

Her practice of hanging the crucifix on the wall communicated a message to the students, said the court, and she did not point to any religious practices the defendants suppressed that do not involve displaying the crucifix on the classroom wall while she is teaching students in the classroom. Further, said the court, both claims demand the same relief—preventing the defendants from disciplining her for displaying the crucifix during instructional time.

Pickering-Garcetti. Because her free exercise claim rests on exercise that involves communication of a religious message, the court found the analysis utilized under Pickering-Garcetti step one for her free speech claim also applied to her free exercise claim. Further, because it had concluded that the crucifix display on the classroom wall was pursuant to the teacher’s official duties and is thus speech attributed to the district, the court found that under these circumstances, the district can control the messages broadcast to students on the classroom walls during instructional time. Accordingly, the court found the teacher was unlikely to prevail on her free exercise claim.

Some leeway. But even if categorizing the crucifix display as expression pursuant to official duties did not preclude the teacher’s free exercise claim, the court still found she was unlikely to prevail on that claim. While she argued that the defendants have to show that the restrictions on her rights serve a compelling interest and are narrowly tailored to that end, the court, agreeing with the defendants, explained that “Second Circuit case law requires courts to provide government entities with some leeway when balancing the free exercise rights of government employees with the risk of Establishment Clause liability.” Further, the court noted, district courts in the Second Circuit have applied this “leeway” concept in cases where school districts have tried to balance employee rights with concerns about Establishment Clause violations.

And while the teacher argued that the “leeway” aspect of these cases is “not good law” after the Supreme Court’s 2022 Kennedy v. Bremerton Sch. Dist. decision because “Kennedy said the tie does not go to the runner when there’s only a phantom constitutional violation, the court here did not agree that Kennedy overruled the Second Circuit “leeway” decisions, which remained binding on it. Thus, the court agreed with the defendants that “Second Circuit case law provides that the District has some ‘leeway’ and ‘breathing space’ as it undertakes the difficult task of balancing the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses.”

Establishment Clause concerns. The teacher also argued that the defendants relied on the endorsement test articulated by the Supreme Court in its 1971 Lemon v. Kurtzman decision, which, she asserted, Kennedy made clear had been abandoned, when they insisted she remove the crucifix. But while the defendants did tell her that the school could not be seen as “endorsing” particular religious beliefs, they also explained in the same letter that “[b]ecause public schools are run by the government, this means that public schools are not allowed, legally, to take any actions that would be seen as establishing or promoting a religion.”

The letter, said the court, also stated that “[t]he Board of Education owns and controls the classroom walls” and noted that the teacher “told the administration that this cross is not tied to a specific curricular unit” and thus there was “no pedagogical justification for hanging this cross.” It further explained that “When a public school employee hangs a religious artifact in their classroom, it sends the message that the school district (which is an arm of the government) is promoting that religion, so putting that religious artifact on the wall of the school building is not legally permissible.”

Noting again that under binding Second Circuit cases, the district must be afforded some leeway in balancing the free exercise rights of its employees and the risk of an Establishment Clause violation, the court found the teacher is unlikely to prevail in showing it was unreasonable for the district to conclude that it risked liability for an Establishment Clause violation had it permitted her to hang the crucifix on the classroom wall during instructional time.

The case is No. 3:25-CV-00153 (SFR).

Judge: Russell, S.

Attorneys: Paul H. McConnell (The Doctor Lawyer Team) for Marisol Arroyo-Castro. Eric Del Pozo (Shipman & Goodwin) for Anthony Gasper, Maryellen Manning, Dario Soto, and Andrew Mazzei.

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