Court Ends Bible Distribution in School

January 9, 2008

Author: JIM SALTER

Source: The Associated Press

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iuWxzSvp6gUjpbkFiGf9PbXyV4PQD8U2IBB01

ST. LOUIS (AP) — A rural school district's long-standing practice of allowing the distribution of Bibles to grade school students is unconstitutional, a federal judge has ruled.

An attorney for the southeastern Missouri school district said Wednesday he will appeal the judge's injunction against the practice.

For more than three decades, the South Iron School District in Annapolis, 120 miles southwest of St. Louis in the heart of the Bible Belt, allowed representatives of Gideons International to give away Bibles in fifth-grade classrooms.