Texas Judge Rules Schools Can Force RFID Chips on Students

Texas Judge Rules Schools Can Force RFID Chips on Students

January 9, 2013

Andrea Hernandez protesting the RFID badges (Source)

Source: Activist Post

In the fall of last year the San Antonio Northside School District in
Texas announced that they would track students with RFID (radio
frequency identification) chips in their student badges.

One student, sophomore Andrea Hernandez, was suspended for refusing to wear the tracking device and took the matter to court.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia ruled in favor of the
school district claiming they have the right to expel Hernandez for
refusing to abide by school requirements. By default the judge ruled
that the school had the right to force children to be treated like
cattle while on campus.

The program, called the “Student
Locator Project,” is aimed at increasing student attendance rates
presumably to boost in public funding for the district.

“There
is something fundamentally disturbing about this school district’s
insistence on steamrolling students into complying with programs that
have nothing whatsoever to do with academic priorities and everything to
do with fattening school coffers,” said John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute when he took the case.
<blockquote class="tr_bq">As part of the pilot program, roughly 4,200
students at Jay High School and Jones Middle School are being required
to wear “SmartID” card badges embedded with an RFID tracking chip which
will make it possible for school officials to track students’
whereabouts on campus at all times. School officials hope that by
expanding the program to the district’s 112 schools, they can secure up
to $1.7 million in funding from the state government. (Source)</blockquote>
The Hernandez family argued that the RFID badges violated their daughter's privacy rights and referred to them as the "Mark of the Beast", a reference to a warning in the Book of Revelations.

The primary defense was not to challenge the obvious privacy issues
involved with the badges, but to seek a religious exemption. The judge
ruled that the badge is “not grounded in her religious beliefs” and is a
“secular choice rather than a religious concern.”

“The Supreme
Court has made clear that government officials may not scrutinize or
question the validity of an individual’s religious beliefs,” said John
W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute, in a statement.

“By declaring Andrea Hernandez’s objections to be a secular choice and
not grounded in her religious beliefs, the district court is placing
itself as an arbiter of what is and is not religious. This is simply not
permissible under our constitutional scheme, and we plan to appeal this
immediately," he added.

The court originally agreed to block the suspension to hear the case, but would not extend that request for the appeal process.

"In coming to Andrea’s defense, Rutherford attorneys have alleged that
the school’s attempts to penalize, discriminate and retaliate against
Andrea violate her rights under Texas’ Religious Freedom Act and the
First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution," said
Rutherford's lawyers.


Source:-
http://www.blacklistednews.com/Texas_Judge_Rules_Schools_Can_Force_RFID_Chips_on_Students/23516/0/38/38/Y/M.html